Personal Injury Law

Obama Speech to American Medical Association - Not Advocating Damage Caps

By Benjamin J. Sansone, Esq.

For about a week myself and other personal injury lawyers were waiting to see the President's speech to the AMA in Chicago, IL today. For about a week there have been concerns that Obama would advocate limitations on medical malpractice cases in order to get the AMA to support his health care initiatives.

Today, I was relieved when I heard him say the following:

"[...] I?m not advocating caps on malpractice awards which I believe can be unfair to people who?ve been wrongfully harmed, I do think we need to explore a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first, let doctors focus on practicing medicine, and encourage broader use of evidence-based guidelines. That?s how we can scale back the excessive defensive medicine reinforcing our current system of more treatment rather than better care.?

Personal injury trial lawyers are usually painted as the special interest group that does not want any limitation on injury lawsuits. This is true as personal injury lawyers are the only group that advocate for those who may be harmed in the future. Individuals and families that have never been affected by medical mistakes usually see this issue as lawyer greed, however, those same people realize the importance of the issue of patient rights and justice as soon as their lives are touched by it.

Full post as published by Missouri Injury Law Blog on June 15, 2009 (boomark / email).