Jim Sensenbrenner: “Mr. Speaker, what the gentlewoman from Colorado did not tell us is what is not getting media attention, and that is that…”

“Mr. Speaker, what the gentlewoman from Colorado did not tell us is what is not getting media attention, and that is that doctors are closing up their practices. When the Committee on the Judiciary heard testimony on this issue, the wife of a man named Tony Dyess came and spoke. Mr. Dyess was involved in an automobile accident. He had a spinal cord injury, and because there were no neurosurgeons left in southern Mississippi, it took 6 hours to airlift him to a hospital in Louisiana that has some better medical liability laws, and the golden hour for neurosurgery had passed; and as a result Tony Dyess is a quadriplegic simply because malpractice insurance costs chased the neurosurgeons out of southern Mississippi. This is an issue of access to health care, and we cannot have liability insurance costs force doctors to close their practices and not have access to people who need doctors and need them desperately.”