On Monday, Governor Rick Perry attended the new headquarters opening of the King Street Patriots -- which is apparently an important stop in-between his giving speeches to RNC Chairs in Dallas and trying to force his own Party to do what he wants on the budget. Anyways...
I received an e-mail from a woman who attended the event, shook the Governor's hand, and took a lot of notes. For the most part, the event was most of the anti-Washington rah rah rah that we've all heard a thousand times. But Perry did say something interesting regarding the loser pays bill that passed, and with her permission, I wanted to republish her notes. Consider this a rough transcript of what Perry said at the opening of the new King Street Patriots headquarters:
The Loser Pays bill puts us over the top, better than we already are, into the stratosphere. I told Haley Barbour a year ago that I was going to do this and he said, Rick, if you do this you can put a toll road on every highway that goes into Texas! (much laughter and applause) We are setting standards! We say NO to special interests!
The underlying legislation will add Texas to a handful of states that have some version of "loser-pay" rules for lawsuits. Those rules are supposed to limit frivolous lawsuits by making it costly for litigants to file suits that have little chance of success. But under the bill that passed the Texas House last week, some lawsuit winners might have to pay their opponent's legal costs.
That's not loser pays. We have been supportive of fighting lawsuit abuse, including the medical malpratice cap, but this goes well beyond the kind of sensible tort reform that has taken place in Texas over the last decade.
This past Friday, the New York Times ran a piece on the recent influx of doctors to Texas ("More Doctors in Texas After Malpractice Caps," October 5, 2007). The article cited the long waiting lines for doctors wanting to receive their license to practice medicine in Texas:
The Texas Medical Board reports licensing 10,878 new physicians since 2003, up from 8,391 in the prior four years. It issued a record 980 medical licenses at its last meeting in August, raising the number of doctors in Texas to 44,752, with a backlog of nearly 2,500 applications. Of those awaiting processing, the largest number, after Texas, come from New York (145), followed by California (118) and Florida (100).
But are Texas patients receiving better care? Another set of statistics -- which was not included in the NY Times article -- shows that there has been a significant increase in disciplinary actions against doctors. The following figures are from the Texas Medical Board:
By the way, 2007 isn't shaping up much better, with 88 doctors disciplined at the Medical Board's August meeting, 30 in June, 34 in April, and 41 in February. That's 193 so far, with two more meetings to go, on a pace to well exceed the 2002 numbers.
Ultimately, it is better for Texas to attract high-quality doctors --- but not if recruiting those doctors jeopardizes the health care of Texans. Texans for Lawsuit Reform -- the group that pushed tort reform through in 2003 -- would disagree with me, I'm sure. But they also hired as a TLR spokesmen a doctor who misdiagnosed bone cancer in a 16-year old girl, so their credibility on promoting patient's rights comes into question.
Prop 12 was all about the politics -- Republicans wanting to limit the size of lawsuits so that trial lawyers wouldn't have as much money to donate to Democrats. Prop 12 was never about Texas patients having greater access to quality health care -- and all you have to do is look at the Texas Medical Board's own disciplinary action history I cited above to believe me.
