Conclusion

Placing arbitrary limits on the 7th Amendment rights of our citizens, especially those who have placed their trust and often their lives in the hands of a medical care provider, only to be harmed by that provider, will have real life, devastating effects on real life people. A cap on “non-economic” damages would cruelly impact those devastated by acts of malpractice while failing to achieve any correction of the premium problem. Before considering drastic and unnecessary changes to the civil justice system, consider the following real examples of actual claims involving Georgia citizens and the impact of an arbitrary cap on damages:

The survivors of a 26-year-old, low-wage-earning mother, whose death was caused by a botched cesarean section, who would have almost no economic damages to recover. Her husband was left with no spouse and the baby girl has no mother. Tort “reformers” would limit this family’s rights to recovering $250,000.

The case of the death of a 21-year-old college student, whose bacterial meningitis was misdiagnosed, would involve very little economic damages. His parents were left to agonize over the unfulfilled dreams of a life they had created but the tort reformers would value their loss at nothing more than $250,000.

The tort reformers also would limit to $250,000 the value of the loss of an elderly woman, whose life expectancy was “only another 10 years” according to an insurance company’s actuarial experts. She was subjected to the excruciatingly painful effects of a decubitus ulcer that was allowed to develop, exposing the woman’s tailbone and hipbone to life-threatening bacteria from the feces she was forced to lay in for days at the nursing home before she ultimately died of neglect and starvation.

This is the third time in the last three decades that the insurance industry has created this medical malpractice insurance “crisis.” Each time the powerful insurance companies demand that lawmakers enact tort “reform” as the only solution to fix the problem. But, as we have seen, tort “reform” is not the answer, it only increases insurance company profits and punishes those who have been wrongfully injured. It is time for everyone to recognize that this problem is not only happening in all lines of insurance, but is also occurring throughout the world and the same old “fix” of blaming lawsuits is not the real answer. Now is the time for us to begin looking for new solutions and to start looking into the true root of the problem – insurance industry practices by both the liability and health insurance sectors. Only through insurance reform can the next insurance rate hike cycle be avoided.