Better keep an eye on Georgia, where an activist Superior Court Judge known for controversial rulings recently declared Georgia’s stacked cap on non-economic damages – which starts at $350,000 and can increase to $1,050,000 if more than one health care facility is involved – is unfair to the poor and middle class and thus unconstitutional.

Apparently, the judge’s concern for the less advantaged doesn’t extend to their medical care, which was in an acute state of crisis when liability reforms were passed in 2005. A year before, the number of physicians practicing in Georgia had dropped to its lowest point in eight years, 1,750 doctors reported they had stopped or planned to stop emergency room services, and the dearth of baby docs had become so acute that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists put the state on “red alert” status.

Non-economic damage caps work to bring doctors back into states they used to flee and back into practice. Doctors are flooding back into Texas so fast that the state has a massive licensing backlog, as this New York Times article describes, and doctors are moving to poorer communities and providing medical care that was simply unavailable before. Caps have other positive effects as well. A new report from the Perryman group titled “The Texas Turnaround” determined that the Lone Star State’s 2003 limits on non economic damages in medical liability cases has produced an extra $55 billion in annual spending in the state, 223,000 more jobs, and resulted in 430,000 people having health insurance who wouldn’t have otherwise.

The only people who seem to be suffering are the medical malpractice lawyers, who according to this article, have been forced to chase ambulances all the way to Oklahoma to drum up work.