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In his pitch for legislation imposing a "hard cap of $250,000" on medical malpractice awards for non-economic damages, President Bush points the finger at what he calls "a broken medical liability system." But a new analysis of malpractice claims filed over 15 years in his home state of Texas found no such crisis there. "We find no evidence of the medical malpractice crisis that produced headlines over the last several years and led to legal reform in Texas and other states," a group of four legal scholars concluded in a report being released today. "What we found is a sea of calm" in Texas malpractice claim cases from 1988 to 2002, said co-author David A. Hyman, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Illinois. "So, at least in Texas, the tort system can't be the cause of spikes in malpractice premiums." Texas was identified by the American Medical Association as one of more than a dozen states suffering from a malpractice "crisis." The new study comes as the White House is touting its plan to limit non-economic damages as a critical step in reining in health care costs. Bush, the AMA and some conservative scholars argue that an onslaught of lawsuits -- and blockbuster jury awards -- have forced malpractice premiums to historically high levels.
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