Statementby Joanne Doroshow, Executive Director, Center for Justice & Democracy
On Trump Budget Proposal entitled, “Reform The Medical Liability System”
May 24, 2017
Medical malpractice, as with all of health care, involves life and death issues. With these medical malpractice budget proposals, President Trump has chosen death and profit over life.
Each of these measures would harm the most vulnerable and severely injured Americans, including seniors in nursing homes, quadriplegic workers and brain-damaged children. They would remove state legal protections that have saved patients’ lives for centuries. They would broadly restrict the constitutional rights of all Americans to go to court while weakening the system’s ability to prevent medical errors and hold reckless hospitals, drug companies and nursing homes accountable. Actual experience with states that have enacted some of these measures shows that they will do nothing to lower health costs, and in fact will increase costs.
No voter sent President Trump to Washington to strip away the constitutional rights of everyday Americans, as these proposals would do. We hope Congress immediately rejects them.
(Trump’s med mal proposals can be found here at p. 114. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/budget/fy2018/... Note that many of these measures have not been scored by the CBO and of those that have been, there is enormous disagreement about the validity of the CBO numbers, and the actual impact on both costs and the quality of health care.)
###
The Center for Justice & Democracy is the only national consumer organization in the country exclusively dedicated to protecting our civil justice system. If you'd like more information, please contact us.
