On the last day of February, a bill which would severely restrict the recourse of users of the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, military-provided medical care and anyone who receives health care through a "federal program, subsidy, or tax benefit" went before the House Judiciary Committee for markup and voting.
H.R. 1215, the "Protecting Access to Care Act," would restrict the compensation and accountability available to anyone who went to court to recover damages for injury caused by a doctor, hospital, nursing home, drug or medical device.
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According to a Huffington Post article by Joanne Doroshow, executive director of the Center for Justice & Democracy at New York Law School in New York City, Congressional Republicans have proposed the bill to get "government out of health care," although "the full scope [of the bill] is unclear because the bill has not been examined in a single legislative hearing."
Among other things, the bill caps compensation for noneconomic injuries, such as "paralysis, trauma, reproductive harm," at $250,000, "which would be mandated in states even where such caps are unconstitutional" according to the report. It limits the term after which recourse may not be pursued and obliges "each party" in any lawsuit to be liable for its own "fair share" of damages based on share of responsibility.
Other provisions include, according to the report, "[f]ederal repeal of state collateral source rules, meaning a wrongdoer can reduce their obligation to compensate a patient by the amount of disability, workers compensation or other insurance received, to which a patient has a right" and "[f]ederal repeal of state joint and several liability laws, meaning that the injured patient … would have to cover the cost of an injury if one of the fully-responsible wrongdoers cannot pay."
While according to the Health Coalition on Liability and Access the bill "is modeled after proven reforms already in place in Texas, California, and many other states around the country," the Huffington Post report points out the Texas law "severely caps damages" allows doctors to continue to practice even after major mistakes, and adds that "[r]esearchers studying patient safety in states with 'caps' (like Texas) found 'consistent evidence that patient safety generally falls' after caps are enacted. That's because medical malpractice liability gives providers an incentive to be careful," the report concludes.
The bill's progress certainly bears watching.
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