Two Bills Introduced to Lower Doctors’ Medical Malpractice Rates—Without Infringing on Patients’ Rights!

As those who have been following the distracting and irrelevant attacks on patients’ rights in recent days can attest, one reason behind many of these assaults has been the notion that medical malpractice claims are somehow contributing to the cost of doctors’ insurance premiums.  These “blame the patient” arguments have been made at the state level for years, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary.

So we are very happy to report today that Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) 
have both introduced bills aimed at addressing something that actually could help stabilize doctors’ insurance costs—namely, by repealing a law we alluded to yesterday, the McCarren-Ferguson Act of 1945.

Simply put, the law makes insurance purveyors the only industry in America (other than Major League Baseball) exempt from federal anti-trust laws that prevent collusion and price-fixing—and have frequently left doctors holding the bag.

“In the markets for health insurance and medical malpractice insurance, patients and doctors are paying the price, as costs continue to increase at an alarming rate.  Insurers should not object to being subject to the same antitrust laws as everyone else,” said Leahy in a statement introducing his bill.