Washington, D.C. — President Obama should not make innocent Americans injured by cost-cutting hospitals and negligent doctors a political sacrifice in his quest for health care reform, said Consumer Watchdog in advance of the President’s health care speech tonight.
State malpractice damage caps and other limits on liability for negligent health care providers have locked injured patients out of court, degraded the quality of health care and denied justice to too many families, said Consumer Watchdog.
Watch interviews with real Americans injured by medical mistakes who were unable to obtain justice because of unfair limits on their legal rights at: www.JusticeForPatients.org
Download Consumer Watchdog’s letters with other patient advocates urging Congress to take on medical malpractice in health reform by stemming the epidemic of preventable medical errors, not by shifting costs from poorly performing medical facilities and providers to struggling families. Letter #1. Letter #2.
Read Consumer Watchdog’s report on the failure of medical malpractice liability limits to lower doctors’ insurance premiums in California, “How Insurance Reform Lowered Doctors’ Medical Malpractice Rates In California, And How Malpractice Caps Failed”.
Further evidence that limits on the liability of negligent doctors and unsafe hospitals are unjustified, and would have little impact on the country’s health care expenditures, can be found in this 2009 Americans for Insurance Reform analysis of medical malpractice insurance premiums and payouts.
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