Clinton Stirs Unease on Medical Malpractice
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The subject of medical malpractice merited but one sentence in President Clinton’s address Wednesday night on health care. But even before he unveiled his plan, lawyers, doctors, and patients alike were complaining about the changes the President has proposed for resolving medical malpractice disputes. In urging everyone to take responsibility for solving the health care crisis, the President mentioned “lawyers who abuse malpractice claims,” then quickly moved on. He left unmentioned his eight-pronged program for changing the current system, perhaps because it has already angered two key constituencies, each bearing the consumerist banner: lawyers and doctors. Plaintiffs’ lawyers, who contributed large sums of money to the Clinton campaign, complained that the changes would make it more difficult for victims of negligent doctors to get to court, then reduce what they could collect once they got there. They charged that the Clinton Administration was trying to sell doctors on health care reform by overhauling a system that works fine as is. A Triple ‘Minimal’ “There is a minimal, minimal, minimal relationship between the cost of health care and the cost of litigating these cases,” said Barry Nace, a Washington lawyer and president of the American Trial Lawyers Association. Consumer activists and patients’ rights groups were even more unhappy. “I think the Administration knows this will likely decrease the quality of health care, but they’re willing to play politics with people’s lives in order to reach a political goal,” said Pamela Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. “It’s a plan that Dan Quayle could like.” More : query.nytimes.com |