New Health Care Town Hall Scheduled

Given the tremendous response from people at my recent town hall on health care reform – as well as subsequent public meetings where people were just itching to talk about health care reform – I’ve scheduled another town hall meeting for this Saturday, September 12th in St. Cloud.  I hope you can join me for a discussion about this very important issue.

Saturday, September 12, 2009
8:30 am to 10:00 am
Tech High School gymnasium
233 12th Avenue S, St. Cloud

Though it enjoys broad support with the American public and has proven its cost-saving benefits in states across the country, commonsense tort reform is missing from the legislative proposals that are making their way through House and Senate committees working on health care reform.

The costs that defensive medicine and frivolous malpractice lawsuits add to health care each year are staggering.  One estimate puts the cost of malpractice awards alone at $20-40 billion a year.    And, because doctors have to pay such high premiums for malpractice insurance – even those with spotless records of practicing medicine – you pay more, too.  And those premiums are rising about four times the rate of inflation -- about 12 percent annually, in fact.

Defensive medicine – that battery of tests and procedures and visits that your doctor might order just to cover themselves – adds even more to the costs of care.  And, most doctors do practice defensive medicine.  A study last year by the Massachusetts Medical Society found that 83% of doctors reported doing so.  A study by Daniel Kessler and Mark McClellan, Stanford professors with extensive government and academic experience in health policy, found that the average family pays nearly $2,000 a year in extra health expenses according to the rate of defensive medicine.  The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons pegged the costs system-wide at about $178 billion a year.

In Texas, where tort reform was enacted in 2003, the positive impact on the health care was astounding.  Within four years, malpractice premiums fell by 21% and not only did doctors stop fleeing Texas to practice in states with friendlier legal environments, but 7,000 new doctors set up practices.

I am cosponsoring legislation to enact these commonsense reforms to our health care system.  Thus far, they’ve been rejected on nearly party-line votes in committee.  Doctor, former Chairman of the Democrat National Committee, and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean said recently, “The reason that tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everyone else they were taking on.”  But just as I am hopeful that health care reform can be a bipartisan endeavor, I am hopeful that this critical look at our legal system can be a part of the reform that we pass into law.

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