This week, U.S. House leaders will bring to the floor H.R. 5, legislation that would limit the legal rights of injured patients and families of those killed by negligent health care. This bill is so outrageously broad that it covers not only cases involving medical malpractice, but also cases involving unsafe drugs and nursing home abuse and neglect.
Up until now, there has been so much opposition to the bill -- not just from the public interest community but also from Tea Party folks -- that House leaders haven't had the nerve to bring this bill to a vote.
Now they've suddenly decided to force the issue. But if I were them, I might think twice.
It's no secret that that the GOP has been busy lately driving away half the country's voters -- i.e., women. As Maureen Dowd put it, as "Republican men to wrestle American women back into chastity belts ... [i]n some kind of insane bout of mass misogyny, Republicans are hounding out the women voters."
The key provision in H.R. 5 would establish a permanent across-the-board $250,000 "cap" on compensation for "non-economic" injuries suffered by patients. Non-economic damages compensate for intangible but real "quality of life" injuries, like permanent disability, loss of a woman's reproductive system, disfigurement, trauma, loss of a limb or blindness. Limiting compensation for these kinds of injuries is discriminatory. For example, when President Bill Clinton vetoed a products liability bill in 1996, he explained,
The legislation would make it impossible for some people to recover fully for non-economic damages. This is especially unfair to senior citizens, women, children, who have few economic damages, and poor people, who may suffer grievously but, because their incomes are low, have few economic damages.
For women, the discrimination is even broader than this. In a 2004 law review article, University of Buffalo Law Professor Lucinda Finley wrote about empirical research she conducted of jury verdicts, which found,
[C]ertain injuries that happen primarily to women are compensated predominantly or almost exclusively through noneconomic loss damages. These injuries include sexual or reproductive harm, pregnancy loss, and sexual assault injuries." Also, "[J]uries consistently award women more in noneconomic loss damages than men ... [A]ny cap on noneconomic loss damages will deprive women of a much greater proportion and amount of a jury award than men. Noneconomic loss damage caps therefore amount to a form of discrimination against women and contribute to unequal access to justice or fair compensation for women.
There are many reasons to oppose forcing a vote on H.R. 5, but the impact of this bill on women is a pivotal one. And for the GOP, the timing could not be more foolish.
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You won't believe how much pertinent info. that is currently being decided in Congress regarding our lives, medicine and legal rights to sue.
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Money talks. And it has also bought your Congressman.
yeah in what world? The GOP non healthcare world... its another one of those Oxymorons those GOP morons are putting forth... like no contraception but cut school lunch programs.... like No Child Left Behind but cut education to the bone...
Every Women and Man, young and old that wants a remote chance of retirement after a long life of work should get out and vote these GOP out... just look at what Wall St has done already to your retirement nest egg.. now they want the rest.
Instructing doctors what to tell a patient--that your deformed child is developing normally, that abortions cause breast cancer...
I can see where it may have put a few doctors' backs up.
I think the doctors will not be fooled,though, since the bill only addresses the amount the insurance company has to pay out---not the premiums the doctors have to pay the company.
So maybe the GOP is wooing the insurance companies?
My head spins.
Why doesn't the AMA speak up about all this horrible biased legislation?
Does it say anything about the filing of false claims? No.
If $35 of every doctor visit goes to insurance, should we not address that concern to the insurance company? and further...Does the bill say anything about insurance premiums charged by insurance companies? No.
This bill is protect insurance companies from large payouts.
Check the latest awards given that truly cover catastrophic costs like this.
When a couple's child was born with no arms and one leg, after the doctor had failed (for some reason) to accurately read two seperate ultrasounds--and said doctor was an ardent anti-abortionist, quite conincidentally) they were told their child was fine.
They sued for $9 million an amount arrived at by consulting with (further) doctors regarding the child's lifetime care. They were already in their forties at the time, and knew they would die before the child.
The jury awarded $4.5 million for the lifetime care costs. Not enough, but some (and as you say, I am sure the lawyer took a chunk).
How would $250,000 be even CLOSE to fair?
When are Republicans going to start representing people instead of a company's bottom line?
G reedy
O ld
P rofiteers
So, women "CONSISTENTLY" being awarded "MORE in noneconomic loss damages than men" is your definition of "fair"?
You must be a feminist.
Feminists see issues that affect everyone and only notice or care about it affecting women.
Yes, at one point that is what was talked about...
But later OTHER THINGS were discussed as well.
It goes without saying that women are awarded more than men for women only issues.
That is not what was said.
If women received equal pay through legislation currently being blocked by the republicans, more of their damges would be deemed economic, and the balance would be restored.
Do you understand now?
Feminists see women as PEOPLE, no more no less.
The fact that women are the underprivileged gender in every country is a fact, created by a system put in place by RIGHT WING MEN, not feminists.
To put it simply, what these legislation would say is that if stay-at-home Mom gets raped, it doesn't affect her husband's income, so she gets less in damages than he would if he slipped on a wet floor and twisted his ankle at work.
But we know the republican party is now officially pro-rape, so this should surprise no one.
It reminds me of a copyright practice companies were once famous for. They would use a copyrighted piece of music or something for their commercial, and settle afterward, because it was cheaper than paying for the copyright usage in straightforward way. People do what they can to save money, and if they know certain abuses can take place against basically powerless people (since $$=power) with less economic threat, those abuses could very well increase. Troubling.
BTW congratulations on being called a "Feminist." They say that like it was a bad thing. As a male, one of the greatest compliments i ever received was when a Philosophy professor called me a "radical Feminist." He had asked the class for a definition of feminist or feminism. I told him I had two
noun- feminism is the radical idea that women are people.
adjective-any woman who can verbalize thoughts and ideas that differentiate her from a door post is a feminist. P.S. f/f