George W. Bush launched a new war, this one on victims of medical malpractice, in a speech in Madison County, IL, which was described as a "judicial hellhole" because of its alleged history of lopsided pro-plaintiff verdicts.
Problem is it's not true. Not a word of it.
Of 720 medical malpractice and wrongful death lawsuits filed from 1996 to 2003, only 14 cases - 1.9 percent - resulted in jury verdicts. Eight of those favored the defendant. And of the six verdicts favoring the plaintiff, only one exceeded the $250,000 cap that Bush has proposed.
As to Bush's hysterical claim that well meaning doctors are being driven from their practices by greedy plaintiffs and their lawyers: network executives at Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Illinois' largest health insurer, said that they are "not aware of any great flight of physicians because of the malpractice issues. We are basically about where we have been. Even anecdotally, [we are] not hearing any evidence of that."
Roanoke Times )VA) - So much for facts on tort reform
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