Will The Right To Sue Bad Doctors Survive Health Care Reform?

The video above tells the story of Merlyna Adams-- a school principal from Louisiana who sought treatment for a kidney stone. After a month of botched treatment, her body developed sepsis, a complication caused by infection. She suffered congestive heart failure, renal failure and pulmonary failure. The restricted blood flow to her hands and feet required her to have both legs amputated below the knee and she lost both hands. She is unable to engage in everyday tasks like brushing her teeth, taking a bath, eating or using the restroom without another person.

Every year, the lives of 98,000 Americans are utterly devastated by medical malpractice. 98,000 Reasons has more info and more of these heartbreaking stories. There's also a page to take action and tell the Senate not to gut patient's rights.

I'm bringing this up because the Senate is quietly considering gutting the rights of patients harmed by medical malpractice to sue. It's called "tort reform" and it's been one of the longest running right-wing scams going. Teabaggers seem to think it was written into the Bill of Rights and then hidden by Communists. Dozens of states have enacted "tort reform" with disastrous results. Now it's a very real possibility that it will be snuck into the health care bill.

We've seen with Stupak-Pitts the way absolutely awful crap can suddenly insert itself into a huge bill like this. This little noticed note (PDF) from a several hundred page "Sense of the Senate" document indicates that "tort reform" is a very real threat to attach itself to health care reform like a tick:

SUBTITLE H-SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING MEDICAL MALPRACTICE

Current Law

No provision

Chairman's Mark

The Chairman's Mark would express the Sense of the Senate that health care reform presents an opportunity to address issues related to medical malpractice and medical liability insurance.  The
Mark would further express the Sense of the Senate that states should be encouraged to develop and test alternatives to the current civil litigation system as a way of improving patient safety, reducing medical errors, encouraging the efficient resolution of disputes, increasing the availability of prompt and fair resolution of disputes, and improving access to liability insurance, while preserving an individual's right to seek redress in court. The Mark would express the Sense of the Senate that Congress should consider establishing a state demonstration program to evaluate alternatives to the current civil litigation system.

This is a sop to the Blue Dogs who are ever vigilant for ways to claim to be doing deficit reduction while actually throwing millions and millions to the insurance companies. The CBO has stated that "tort reform" does almost nothing to reduce costs, all it does is screw anyone who is the victim of a bad doctor.

Please send a message to your Senator today and tell them this is NOT the kind of reform we need.