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Bill: Physician Responsibility Act
Details
Submitted by[?]: Populist Liberal Party
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: April 2114
Description[?]:
| Whereas, Tort reform discourages well-founded lawsuits much more than it discourages bad ones; bad ones don't make it to the stage of gaining damages, and Whereas, malpractice insurance companies never pass along their savings to the doctors anyway, We hereby propose eliminating the cap on damages in lawsuits. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change Tort reform on non-civil lawsuits.
Old value:: There is a cap on monetary damages awarded to patients in lawsuits.
Current: There is no cap on monetary damages awarded to patients in lawsuits.
Proposed: There is no cap on monetary damages awarded to patients in lawsuits.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 00:35:28, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Kanjoran People's Party | To | Debating the Physician Responsibility Act |
| Message | I've never been too educated on the matter of tort reform and lawsuits, but I'll make my decision after sufficient debate. |
| Date | 00:53:10, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Populist Liberal Party | To | Debating the Physician Responsibility Act |
| Message | Basically, what tort reform is, is something pushed (in this case) by insurance companies, and in business by corporations. They push for caps on damage awards promising their savings will be passed along, although in practice they never are. They also argue that they discourage frivolous lawsuits, but frivolous lawsuits don't reach the point of trial as a rule. The huge awards in some malpractice lawsuits tend to result when a doctor has been found to be reckless, meaning he didn't give any reasonable level of thought to the consequences of his actions. We feel that a doctor who behaves recklessly is unfit to practice. Lesser awards (no punitive damages) result from negligence, which means that a doctor made a mistake that he should have known better than to make. This will make less difference in these cases, and such doctors are not unfit to practice unless this happens often to them. But the patient still did nothing wrong. In either case, though-- suppose a mistake makes someone who is reasonably healthy disabled for life. As of now, the victim has to survive on a subsistence income that the government provides. What should happen is that the doctor, through his insurance company, should be required to provide above-subsistence income to the patient for life. After all, it was not the patient's fault, but rather the doctor's. |
| Date | 13:47:18, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Kanjoran People's Party | To | Debating the Physician Responsibility Act |
| Message | I'll wait for voter opinion on this one. But I think what really matters is where the caps are set. |
| Date | 16:35:46, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Populist Liberal Party | To | Debating the Physician Responsibility Act |
| Message | Why should there be any caps at all, though? If you set the cap quite high, then you're not affecting the damages awarded from negligent doctors' mistakes but you are protecting reckless doctors from getting demolished. Do you think that a reckless doctor should be practicing medicine at all? |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||||
| yes | Total Seats: 63 | ||||||
| no |
Total Seats: 377 | ||||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 0 |
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