The Obama health care “reform” contains a love note to his friends the lawyers. Some reform advocates have been asking for tort reform as an essential part of any health care reform. Now they know how that went.
Contacts on Capitol Hill inform me that Republicans yesterday managed to block a remarkable provision that had been slipped into the House leadership’s 794-page health care bill just before it went to a House Ways & Means markup session. If their description of the provision is accurate — and my initial reading of the language gives me no reason to think it isn’t — it sounds as if they managed to (for the moment) hold off one of the more audacious and far-reaching trial lawyer power grabs seen on Capitol Hill in a while.
Obama giving a gift to the trial lawyers ? I find that hard to believe-not !
A bit of language on p. 714, I am told, would remove a significant barrier to litigation, namely a rule authorizing a lien action to be filed on behalf of Medicare only after a previous “judgment”, that is to say, only after the success of an earlier lawsuit (by the injured party) establishing responsibility for the injury.
Language on p. 715 would double damages in cases of “intentional tort or other intentional wrongdoing”.
P. 716 specifies that “any person” may bring the action, that is, it need not be a lawyer representing the injured person or any other injured person.
P. 717: the bounty would be a rich one, 30 percent plus expenses.
This involves the phenomenon of an injured party, say in an auto accident, being compensated for medical costs by two sources of insurance, the Medicare program (in the case of a beneficiary) plus the liability insurance of the other driver (or the victim’s own medical benefits coverage). The health insurance or Medicare may then sue to recover benefits paid from the victim’s health insurance by being reimbursed by the party at fault’s liability coverage. I dealt with this all the time in the trauma center. Generally, this required a judgement determining fault.
Now, a bounty hunting trial lawyer, the “other person” means he doesn’t even have to represent a party to the case, can file suit and collect 30% of damages paid.
Obama’s gift to the trial lawyers will do nothing to save costs. It does help with those contributions, though. So far the Republicans blocked it but don’t bet on this in the final version. Doctors who support OBama have been asking for tort reform as part of health care reform. Doctors get screwed, as usual.