The Final Score on Medical Liability Reform and Health Care
March 24, 2010
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has a nice little summary of how medical liability reform fared in the giant, trillion-dollar health care bill President Obama signed yesterday. In the final analysis, $50 million will be made available to states that want to launch “demonstration projects” to develop alternative dispute resolution procedures and promote a reduction of health care errors. But of course there’s a catch.
“… if a state does go the alternative-dispute resolution route – and sets up, say an arbitration system presided over by a panel of medical experts – there’s a huge loophole. The law allows any plaintiff to ‘opt out’ of a program he or she doesn’t like, and pursue his or her claims in state court.”
That’s what “tort reform” looks like when the majority party in Congress is beholden to the trail bar for over $178 million in campaign contributions during the last election.