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Thursday, March 27, 2003The Feinstein bill is a compromise intended to win Democratic support, which is crucial in the closely divided Senate, where 60 votes are needed to prevent a filibuster. But the $500,000 cap is drawing complaints from the American Medical Association, which lobbied heavily for the House bill and is strongly opposed by the association's affiliate in California. So Mrs. Feinstein said she intended to hold her bill "in abeyance." "There is no way that I am going to introduce legislation that is going to be fought by my own doctors, who I am trying to help," she said in an interview on Tuesday. The physician groups are concerned by studies that suggest that caps of $500,000 are too high and unlikely to stop rising malpractice premiums. There are other problems with the compromise, too: Mrs. Feinstein's compromise would include what she calls a "catastrophic exemption," for cases involving severe disfigurement, severe physical disability or death. In those suits, jury awards for pain and suffering would be limited to $2 million or $50,000 times the number of years the victim could be expected to live, whichever was greater. That's a lot of money and it does nothing to curb the enthusiasm for "jackpot justice." And then, there's the usual political shenanigans: Dr. Lewin said he hoped senators could be persuaded to support a measure more like the House bill. But that appears unlikely. One Senate Democratic aide said that while several Democratic lawmakers were working on an alternative Democrats were angered that Dr. Frist and other Republicans were planning to bypass the Senate's committee process by bringing a bill directly to the floor. posted by Sydney on 3/27/2003 08:33:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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