HuffPo Repost: Big Pharma Worms Its Way Into Congress’ Medical Malpractice Bill

 

While the nation pays close attention to the Senate’s health care bill this week, the U.S. House of Representatives intends to do more egregious harm to everyday people who encounter the health care system. On Wednesday, the House will vote on H.R. 1215, a bill that has languished for three months due to unprecedented progressive and conservative opposition. Between the cruel original bill, and the harsh amendments that will be added to the bill on Tuesday (no Democratic improvements will be allowed), H.R. 1215 would quite literally immunize the health care industry for most kinds of misconduct, from horrendous medical malpractice in hospitals, to nursing home abuse and neglect, to sexual assault by doctors.

Let’s assume all this bill did was make it impossible for patients severely harmed by a hospital’s negligence to bring a case or be adequately compensated. The bill would impose a federal “cap” on what are known as “non-economic” damages, awarded for injuries like permanent disability, mutilation, trauma, loss of a limb, blindness, sexual or reproductive harm, and other types of suffering and pain. H.R. 1215 would federally-mandate that if you suffer the most severe non-economic injuries, they are worth exactly $250,000 (no matter what a local jury finds). This is what your baby’s suffering would be worth if she were severely burned and disfigured in a surgical fire (like little Dahlia Ramirez of Illinois), or what your own life would be worth if, say, your “good” testicle were removed by an incompetent surgeon, condemning you to a lifetime of horrible pain (like Steven Hanes of Pennsylvania). In both Illinois and Pennsylvania, such compensation caps are unconstitutional, as they are in many states. The House leadership doesn’t care. H.R. 1215 would force them on everyone.

Keep reading.