Medical Malpractice Will Be Floated, Shot Down at Summit

Medical malpractice controls will be one of the ideas Republicans throw out at today's health care reform summit between President Obama and Republicans.

And just as quickly, Democrats will throw the idea aside.

It's a terribly emotional issue on both sides. Doctors plead that they can't stay in business or practice in certain areas of the country because of sky-high malpractice insurance or fear that a single lawsuit will bankrupt them. On the other side, lawyers point to the pain and suffering endured by patients and their families.

The case that went to the Illinois Supreme Court and overturned that state's medical malpractice limits this month involved a brain-damaged child who suffered from a botched delivery.

The Illinois case shows the difficulty in even putting a law in place. Three times the state's high court overturned malpractice caps, saying that they violated the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial bodies.

President Obama made his pitch for a compromise on the issue in September when he proposed looking at ways to cut down on medical errors.

"I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I've talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs," the president said in a speech to Congress.

That's about as much as tort reformers should expect from a Democratic president presiding over a Democratic Congress.

In case anyone needed reminding, the biggest trial lawyers' group, the American Association for Justice put out a pre-summit statement that it wanted "lawmakers to remember the 98,000 patients killed every year by preventable medical errors and how restricting their legal rights will not fix America's broken health care system."

And if there's any doubt about the financial muscle of the trial lawyers, consider that their PAC already spent $3.25 million on the 2010 midterm federal political campaigns and had more than $900,000 in cash on hand as of January 31, according to the watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics. In the 2008 election cycle, the PAC spent $5.77 million, mostly on Dems. The trial lawyers are the third-biggest contributor to Democratic candidates, behind the Operating Engineers Union and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, according to the center's data.