Editor:

Rep. Gard is working feverishly to undue a recent Supreme Court decision that found caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases to be unconstitutional. That decision arose from a local 8-year old child whose right arm became paralyzed and deformed, without hope of functioning properly, as a result of negligence by the delivering doctor. The parents sued the doctor, and the jury awarded $403,000 for future medical expenses and $700,000 in non-economic damages to compensate for pain and suffering, mental stress, and loss of enjoyment of normal activity. That $700,000 jury award was then reduced to comply with the state-imposed caps to $410,322. The Wisconsin Supreme Court reviewed the cap and held it was unconstitutional because it imposed a huge and unfair burden on the most severely-injured patients of malpractice, especially children, women, the elderly, and the poor.

Rep. Gard and others are now taking the position that the decision could lead to a disaster in medical care access in Wisconsin because it would lead to skyrocketing malpractice insurance. Despite the Chicken Little cries, the sky is not likely to fall. He is misleading the public. He should be asked to explain the following:

1. If removal of the cap will trigger more malpractice claims, why did this not occur when Wisconsin s cap went from $1 million to none at all in 1991.

2. How will reinstituting the caps lower health care costs for Wisconsin citizens? If malpractice costs are meaningfully connected to overall health costs, then why does Wisconsin enjoy among the lowest malpractice costs in the nation while suffering from among the second highest healthcare premiums in the nation? Wisconsin's share of medical malpractice costs as percentage of total health care costs: 0.04% (40 cents of $100). Nationally, malpractice awards, legal fees and other costs accounted for only $6.5 billion or 0.46 of one percent of the nation's health spending in 2001, according to a Johns Hopkins University study.

3. Why are medical malpractice premiums lower in Minnesota, a state that does not have a cap?

4. A total of just 9 jury verdicts exceeded the cap during a 10-year period (1995-2005) during which the cap was in effect, in a state of 5.5 million people. How can such a microscopic number of cases possibly trigger the crisis about which you are crying wolf, especially when the Patients Compensation Fund has nearly $750 million in assets?

5. If the cap was supposed to solve the shortage of doctors in impoverished urban and rural areas, then why is there still a shortage as documented in a 2004 study by the Wisconsin Medical Society and Wisconsin Hospital Association?

6. A 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine estimated that as many as 44,000 to 98,000 persons die in hospitals each year because of medical mistakes, making it the eighth leading cause of death in the country.

His constituents deserve better information.
http://www.webmediainc.com/54157PT/Peshtig...out1_uid2=14679