According to the American Association for Justice, the United States House of Representatives passed the HEALTH Act of 2011 on March 22nd 2012. This bill is formally known as the Help Efficient, Accessible, Low Cost, Timely, Health Care Act of 2011, or H.R. 5. The bill takes away many of the rights of injured patients, and restricts their ability to create medical malpractice cases. In doing so, the bill may remove hospital incentives to practice careful care, leaving more people at risk to medical negligence. The bill aims at imposing a "one-size-fits-all" cap on damages. This would limit the compensation awarded to patients who are victims of medical malpractice, misdiagnosis, medication abuses, or nursing home abuse.
The American Association of Justice released a statement in January 2011 claiming that the bill was "beyond extreme" and "the most perverse form of legislating imaginable." They reminded the House of Representatives that approximately 98,000 people die from preventable medical errors every year, and these negligent doctors and nurses need to be held responsible for their actions. The Institute of Medicine insists that this problem is only getting worse, and if the ability to sue hospital staff for malpractice is revoked, then carelessness in medical facilities will skyrocket.
Not only does this new bill impose a cap on victims of medical negligence, defective medical devices, and abuse by the medical staff, but it extends the cap to health care providers that intentionally hurt or kill their charges. The bill would also affect insurance companies that deny medical malpractice claims, even after they have been ordered to pay out by the courts. The bill primarily benefits the drug programs and insurance companies in the United States by giving them a cap pay-out that cannot be pushed. Therefore, the government is able to protect insurance companies from paying exorbitant sums to injured patients. The new bill would be a part of the tort reform agenda, which aims to aid and protect health care providers. Unfortunately, in doing so the AAJ believes that the reform will endanger patients in these health care facilities.
The CQ Weekly writes that H.R. 5 will restrict attorney's fees in medical malpractice lawsuits. It also establishes a statute of limitations for filing health care lawsuits. The measure will discard the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel of officials who were hired to make cost-cutting recommendations if Medicare spending exceeded the growth target rates for the year. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes that the Supreme Court is holding hearings concerning this measure.
Currently, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Wyoming have state prohibitions on damage caps. Both Ohio and Oklahoma have prohibitions on damage caps in the cases of wrongful deaths. Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Washington have all stood against the medical malpractice measure by striking down a state medical malpractice cap. In California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, and Texas, courts are currently reviewing the constitutionality of the state medical malpractice cap.
The American Justice Association insists that more tort reform will create worse health care. They say that the civil justice system provides patients with the right to seek restitution for wrongful injuries which were caused by negligent medical staff. Some hospitals have taken drastic measures to reform their practices because of the constant lawsuits that were being brought on their facilities. Litigation was a key component in causing these hospitals to fix their negligent tendencies. By imposing a cap, it will lessen accountability and leave many injured patients without their just reimbursement. The American College of Emergency Physicians did a study on the nature of medical negligence cases, and discovered that states with aggressive legislation that limits patients from prosecuting careless medical staff have the lowest medical scores in the nation. It will be interesting to see if this bill becomes a law, and whether it affects patients in the way that the AAJ and other activist groups predict that it will.