AMA Renews Call for Liability Reform
Representatives of the American Medical Association (AMA) renewed their call on Monday for a national cap on malpractice awards, saying that a liability insurance crisis has now thrown six more than states into a situation where patient are being denied critical healthcare services.
“Ours system has evolved into a lawsuit lottery,” said AMA President Yank D. Coble, Jr. “AMA believes patients that were hurt deserve to be compensated in full, but the run-away jury awards need to be stopped.”
According to the AMA, $1 million-plus jury awards and skyrocketing liability insurance premiums are crippling the nation’s healthcare system.
In June, the AMA previously said 12 states had reached crisis status with patients being denied care and physicians giving up practice. They now say 18 states are in a similar situation.
At a press conference in Washington, the AMA said its latest analysis found that the crisis situation has now grown to include Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and North Carolina. The AMA’s previous list included Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and West Virginia.
Dr. Coble said examples of the crisis in the newly added states included the refusal of obstetricians in Connecticut to deliver babes and the flight of high-risk specialists in Kentucky, where liability premiums rose last year between 87% and 200%.
The renewed call for action coincides with the start of the AMA’s National Advocacy Conference in Washington, during which AMA members plan to lobby various members of Congress in support of a bill that would limit non-economic jury awards.
The bill, modeled after a similar system adopted in California, would allow patients to sue for their entire economic damages such as medical expenses and lost wages but limit compensation for “pain and suffering” to a $250,000 cap.
Joining the AMA call for liability reform are about 50 members of different professional physician and industry associations.
In related news, the Health Coalition on Liability and Access group, a national organization supporting the AMA, released a poll on Monday showing that survey respondents overwhelming favored a legislative fix by a three-to-one margin. The HCLA poll surveyed about 1,000 adult Americans.
But opponents of liability reform say that jury awards are not the core problem.
Instead, the real problem lies with the insurance industry, which has chosen to gouge doctors to make up for lost investment income, Joanne Doroshow, executive director of the Center for Justice Democracy, told Reuters Health.
“What we really need is better regulation of the insurance industry,” Doroshow said.
An AMA-backed bill is currently being debated in the US House of Representatives, where similar bills have passed and where the current bill is also widely expected to pass. But it is expected to receive a colder reception in the US Senate, where Senate Democrats historically have opposed capping damages.
