WHITE HOUSE MEMO, TRIAL LAWYER POSITION ON THE NEED FOR TORT REFORM SHARE SIMILARITIES

Talk of Medical Errors Amounts to 'Changing the Subject'

Washington, DC, September 17, 2009 -- As the White House today issued a memo outlining its position on the need for medical liability reform, American Tort Reform Association director of communications Darren McKinney observed similarities between the memo and arguments used by personal injury lawyers in recent weeks in an effort to keep meaningful liability reforms out of pending health care legislation.

“Like the White House memo to federal agencies earlier this year, warning against regulatory preemption of state tort lawsuits, today’s tort reform-and-health care memo reads as though it could have been drafted by the plaintiffs’ bar,” McKinney said.

“In fact, a letter to the editor by Illinois Trial Lawyers Association president Peter Flowers in today’s Chicago Tribune executes the same misdirection play on medical errors as the White House memo does,” McKinney continued. “And Flowers’ letter, not coincidentally, reads very much like the September 4 statement issued by the national trial lawyer association’s president, Anthony Tarricone (go here).

“Leaving aside the fact that their ‘98,000 patients die each year from medical errors’ statistic is flawed, tort reform and medical errors are separate, if tangentially related, issues. Tort reform advocates readily concede that medical errors occur and should be minimized to the extent possible. Why won’t trial lawyers and their advocates admit that groundless lawsuits occur and should be similarly minimized?

“With four out of every 10 costly medical malpractice lawsuits filed each year in America deemed ‘groundless’ by a 2006 Harvard study, grassroots demands for the inclusion of commonsense tort reform in health care legislation gained momentum during summer town hall meetings. This made the trial lawyers nervous, and now they’re trying to change the subject to medical errors.

“While we should never be complacent about medical errors, the American Medical Association has documented the fact that error rates haven’t changed much since the 1930s. This suggests to objective observers that, regardless of how many groundless lawsuits the plaintiffs’ bar imposes on our health care system, errors will never be eliminated altogether as long as medicine is practiced by imperfect human beings.

“Furthermore, the President often says that his administration ‘can walk and chew gum at the same time,’” McKinney noted. “So why can’t policymakers pursue both meaningful tort reform and the reduction of medical errors separately and simultaneously?”

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The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) is the only national organization dedicated exclusively to tort and liability reform through public education and the enactment of legislation. ATRA's membership includes non profits, small and large companies, as well as state and national trade, business, and professional associations.