| Scranton Times Tribune | |
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| Policy
malpractice in state Capitol |
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| The
state House majority committed malpractice of its own Thursday, when it
passed a constitutional amendment authorizing damage caps in some
medical malpractice cases. Lawmakers who approved the amendment acted on anecdotal information, without hard information to substantiate it. They rejected an attempt to gather and analyze data about medical malpractice insurance problems -- data that likely would establish a factual foundation either for or against limiting non-economic damage awards for pain and suffering. Thus, the lawmakers managed to reduce an important public policy issue to a piece of narrow, special-interest legislation, which is based more upon what the lawmakers don't know than what they do know. They don't know, for example, whether limiting the type of awards in question will have any impact on medical malpractice rates -- which was supposed to be the point of the legislative exercise. And no one in the Legislature who voted for the caps spoke in favor of mandating premium reductions if the caps ultimately become law. By not ensuring that damage caps translate into lower insurance rates, the Legislature is merely producing a windfall for the insurance industry at the expense of consumers. Lawmakers also don't know the extent to which the insurance rate problem has affected access to health care, or even if it has done so. Physicians have warned for several years that high rates would drive many doctors from the state, but the Pennsylvania Medical Society's own numbers, and state statistics derived from licensing and applications for $700 million in public money to help pay premiums, indicate that the exodus has not taken place. Representatives also do not know the impact on the malpractice problem, and rates, of a series of legislative and civil court reforms undertaken by the Legislature and the state Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has verified that the number of new med-mal cases filed statewide has dropped significantly in at least three consecutive years. According to the state Insurance Department, payouts have declined for three consecutive years. Remarkably, the House approved the amendment without mandating an investigation of rate-setting by the insurance industry, which would establish the degree to which caps might help to reduce those rates. So far, the industry extracting the money from doctors and health-care institutions has escaped reform by legislation, regulation or constitutional amendment. Before the Senate acts on the caps amendment -- which would have to be approved twice, in consecutive sessions, by both houses before going to the voters in a referendum -- it should thoroughly investigate the open questions still at issue, in order not to compound the House's legislative malpractice.
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| İScranton Times Tribune 2004 |