They just don’t give up, despite the fact that their “solution” won’t save money. Included in the cost-saving measures proposed by the U.S. Senate’s “Gang of Six” is “medical malpractice reform” – which historically has been a proposal to shield negligent medical providers from liability for injuries they cause.
Lawmakers claim the measure would help trim the trillion-dollar U.S. budget deficit, but that’s wrong. It won’t, especially when malpractice payments are at a record low, according to 2010 data from the federal government’s National Practitioner Data Bank. Extensive research has shown that medical malpractice “reform” doesn’t reduce lawsuits or the costs associated with lawsuits. The lawmakers pushing this measure aren’t even trying to put a dollar figure on it; their plan fails to specify the amount of money the government would save and doesn’t even consider the damage that malpractice victims and U.S. taxpayers would incur.
In fact, restricting the liability of private health care professionals transfers the costs of malpractice from private actors to the taxpayers. If negligent doctors and hospitals are let off the hook and are not required to pay for injuries and deaths they cause, taxpayer-funded programs like Medicaid and Medicare will.
When news broke that insurance giant AIG planned to dole out more than $165million in bonuses to company executives, Public Citizen was outraged.
