Liability Reform Proposed in House of Representatives

Georgia Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey, MD proposed a bill sponsored by Lamar Smith R-Texas and David Scott D-Ga to reform nation's medical liability system.

The Health Act H.R. 5 would limit the following:
1. period of time during which plaintiff could file suit
2. limit non economic damages to $250,000
3. require judges to apportion responsibility for judgements in cases with multiple defendants
4. limit the percentage of all damages that could be claimed as legal file.

The AMA and AAD supports it.

This is the most logical bill I have read in a long time. Of course, the lawyers will not let it pass so continued defensive medicine practices will raise cost of medicine for tax payers and doctors will continue to pay exorbitant malpractice fees.

There is an abuse of the lawsuit in America. The mentality of a lawsuit "score" by lawyers and plaintiffs achieved on the backs of doctors trying to help patients in an imperfect world is crushing the delivery of medicine. It is inconceivable to me that any health care reform is not attached to liability reform. This glaring omission is evidenced of partisan politics with health care reform reflecting a continued control of lawmakers but none other than...lawyers.

Physician Signature Rule

CMS plans to rescind the requirement for clinical laboratories to obtain physician signatures when billing Medicare for laboratory requisitions. Labs lobbied hard to CMS to repeal this burden. This was part of the November 29, 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final rule. Due to heavy criticism the required implementation was delayed until April 1, 2011. Now it is being completely repealed before ever being implemented. That is a good thing. But....

The real issue here is how much does it cost to continually delay, modify and repeal onerous and burdensome paperwork dreamed up by bureaucrats with little to no clinical experience "in the trenches". Maybe if they listen to the doctors struggling day to day in private practice first, then they would avoid costing taxpayers presumably millions of dollars in "change fees".