Issues and Facts

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Health Care

Lawsuit abuse limits our access to health care because it drives up the cost for everyone and threatens the development of new life-saving medications, innovation, procedures and devices.

In the early 2000s, frivolous claims against medical professionals had driven up the cost of medical liability insurance and caused many carriers to pull out of the Texas market. As a result, many doctors – particularly in high risk specialties – shut down their practices or relocated to less lawsuit-friendly states.

Texas was facing a health care crisis.

In 2003, the Legislature passed some of the nation's most far-reaching, significant reforms to curb health care lawsuit abuse. Voters also signaled they were sick of health care lawsuit abuse when they passed a cap on the non-economic damages – pain and suffering, emotional distress, and other hard-to-define items – that could be collected through medical malpractice lawsuits.

Texans quickly began seeing positive changes to our health care system – even though personal injury lawyers rushed to the courthouse to file thousands of new cases before the law changed.

Today our state no longer is on the American Medical Association's list of “crisis” medical liability states. Thousands of new doctors are now practicing in Texas, including many with high-risk specialties such as obstetrics and neurology. New medical liability insurance companies writing policies in Texas mean more choices and lower rates for doctors.

CALA wants to keep health care available and affordable for those who need it. We are working to preserve these gains and prevent new personal injury lawyer attacks on our health care system.

	Did you know? Medical malpractice costs have increased an average of 11.9% per year, in contrast to an average annual increase of 9.3% in all other tort costs. ( Tillinghast-Towers Perrin , December 2003). The number of vaccine manufacturers in the U.S. has dropped from 20 to only three during the past 15 years largely as a result of lawsuits filed on behalf of supposed victims of vaccine side effects ( Health Care News , February 1, 2004). 8% of medical malpractice awards now exceed $1 million (double the amount from five years ago). ( Health Tracking , The Medical Malpractice ‘Crisis': Recent Trends and the Impact of State Tort Reforms, January 21, 2004).