WASHINGTON  -  Getting a doctor to practice in a rural Missouri town can be as delicate as a surgical procedure.  Convincing that doctor to stay is sometimes a challenge, too.  But our access to rural healthcare depends on us being able to offer the incentives, both tangible and intangible, to the men and women who practice medicine in Southern Missouri.

The culprit is bad policy, not bad medicine.

The effect of frivolous lawsuits and awards that benefit the lawyer more than the victim, however, threaten to drive our doctors out of state or out of business.  By driving up the costs of malpractice insurance, even for doctors who have never had a claim against them, these legal inefficiencies create tough choices.

Similarly, lawsuits against companies who sell cheeseburgers, for instance, create a drag on our economy equivalent to a loss of more than two percent of Gross Domestic Product.  Outrageous awards for non-economic damages, along with exorbitant attorney’s fees, often far outweigh the award to each member of the class bringing the lawsuit.

We need reform because we can no longer equate the pain and suffering of real victims who bring legitimate claims, such as a child hurt in a bad delivery, with the eager lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in judgments for invisible emotional damages.

Nationwide, frivolous medical liability lawsuits cost American doctors and businesses
between $60 and $108 billion per year – and tort litigation against American companies reduces productivity and costs us $233 billion annually. 

Twice, I have supported legislation in the House of Representatives to cap these non-
economic damages at $250,000.  But the measure, held up in the Senate both times, has still failed to become law.  As long as politics are allowed to obstruct medical malpractice reforms and tort reforms, people in Missouri will continue to suffer.

Because as badly as federal reforms are needed, our states need them more.

Doctors' malpractice premiums in Missouri are skyrocketing.  These costs for health
care providers have been rising for at least three years.  In 2002, the aggregate insurance premiums paid by doctors rose to $104.7 million, up by 55% from $67.6 million in 2001.  And there is a ripple effect as these costs are dispersed throughout the
system – to insurance companies, to patients, to consumers, and, ultimately, to taxpayers.

We are losing good doctors because of bad policies.  Soaring premiums are driving
Missouri's doctors out of the state. In a recent survey of Missouri neurosurgeons, 21 of 79 (or 26.6%) said they were considering leaving the state and 31 of those 79 (or 9.2%) said they were contemplating early retirement because of the unaffordable premiums.

Even California has a sensible system in place to settle medical malpractice lawsuits.
Their system has proven highly effective at keeping insurance premiums under control.
There, lawsuits get settled 26 percent faster than the national average.  Plaintiffs receive 17 percent more in judgments than under traditional arrangements.  Deserving plaintiffs have still won high-value judgments, and access to the courts has been preserved.

The news is dire for women, too.  In some parts of our states, the nearest OB/GYN is more than an hour away.  In Ste. Genevieve, the nearest gynecological oncologist is 100 miles away.  Such an incomprehensible fact becomes understandable when you consider that the annual malpractice insurance premium for a group of three family
practitioners can easily exceed $71,000.  Doctors, of course, must carry this coverage as required by state law.

To drive the point home, a doctor who has been delivering babies in Cape Girardeau for 23 years says his premiums are about to exceed $85,000.  Given the choice to pay those costs or retire, what would you do?

The pressures of frivolous lawsuits and unreasonable awards ends up being of benefit to very few in our community.  As we try to improve access to health care in rural America, tort reform and better medical malpractice guidelines will be two components of a solution to an ailing system.