PRESS RELEASE
Contacts:
April 29, 2003
Peter
Guzzo
11:00 a.m.
609-883-7481
Room 109
Dena Mattola
State House
609-540-6609
Trenton, NJ
Consumer,
Victim’s Protection, Senior and Health Advocacy Groups
Urge New Jersey General Assembly to Restore Fairness to Medical
Malpractice
Reform Bill
TRENTON
- Joining forces at a press conference held today in Trenton, various consumer,
victim’s protection, senior and health advocacy groups urged the New Jersey
General Assembly to undo the anti-consumer and anti-victim’s provisions added
to Assembly, No. 50, the “New Jersey Medical Care Access and Responsibility
and Patients First Act” when it passed the Senate on March 20, 2003.
Participating in the press conference were Marilyn Askin, President of
the NJ AARP; Peter Guzzo, Executive Director of Consumers for Civil Justice.
; Dena Mattola, Executive Director of NJ PIRG; Ev Liebman of NJ Citizen
Action; Paul Amitrani of the Hemophilia Association of NJ; and Jeanne Otersen,
Policy Director for Health Professionals and Allied Employees (AFT/AFL-CIO).
“The number of constituents represented here today exceeds one
million,” stated Peter Guzzo, Executive Director of Consumers for Civil
Justice (CCJ). CCJ is a coalition
of organizations, including those participating in today’s press conference,
fighting to protect the civil justice system and preserve health benefits for
all New Jerseyans.
“But
we aren’t here today to play a numbers game as the doctors are doing when they
threaten to send thousands of doctors to Trenton to pressure the Legislature to
enact reforms they favor,” Guzzo added. “We
are here today to deal with the facts,” he concluded, “which are that caps
on non-economic damages in medical malpractice awards hurt victims of medical
malpractice and their families without providing premium relief to doctors. We favor helping doctors, and support direct premium relief
to doctors through the creation of a fund financed through surcharges paid by
employers, doctors, attorneys and other licensed professionals, but not at the
victims’ expense, as caps do.”
Dena Mattola, Executive Director of NJ PIRG stated that “this crisis in
medical malpractice insurance rates has been blown out of proportion.
It’s real, but time limited based on the cyclical economics of the
insurance industry and investment losses caused by the country’s economic
slowdown. Furthermore, this crisis
effects less than 10% of all doctors in New Jersey.
We need to find a solution, such as providing subsidies for these
doctors, that solves the problem without damaging the rights of consumers.”
Marilyn Askin, President of NJ AARP, which represents over one million
senior citizens in New Jersey, added that “AARP wants malpractice reform that
focuses on consumers. Proposals
that set unreasonable limits on pain and suffering awards do not help injured
people receive fair compensation or reduce medical errors.
Caps on non-economic damages make it harder for people who are injured to
obtain fair compensation and are particularly unfair to retirees or people with
limited income potential who may not suffer economic damages.”
Ev Liebman, speaking on behalf of NJ Citizen Action and its 80,000
members, asked the doctors to “join forces with consumers, victims and their
own patients in exposing the real root of the medical malpractice insurance
problem, which is the insurance industry. The
insurance industry’s poor business judgments are haunting doctors during these
hard economic times. Yet doctors
are unwilling to take off their blinders and fully examine the real cause of
this crisis.”
Paul Amitrani, Past President of the Hemophilia Association of NJ, stated
that the association “opposes any law that limits an individual’s access to
courts. By access we mean anything
that impedes the ability of an individual to bring suit, or to be fully
compensated for their injuries. Rather,
the Hemophilia Association of NJ favors the traditional means of determining
damages – the jury system. In
this way, all parties to the action get a fair hearing of the facts of their
specific injury, and the jury makes a case by case determination as to the
amount of damages.”
Jeanne Otersen, Policy Director of Health Professionals and Allied
Employees, which represents 9000 nurses and health care workers in New Jersey,
emphasized “the need to make systemic changes in our health care system that
will prevent medical error, and improve delivery of care and working conditions
for all health care professionals.” Otersen
pointed out that the 1998 Institute of Medicine reported 98,000 preventable
medical errors each year while other studies demonstrate the connection between
patient deaths and understaffing. Otersen
concluded that “capping awards to victims won’t change that, but addressing
the root causes of medical errors will.”
In addition to opposing caps on non-economic damages in medical
malpractice claims and favoring direct insurance premium relief to high risk
doctors, the various consumer organizations also expressed other concerns with
Assembly Bill No 50 which will be addressed at the Joint Assembly Banking and
Insurance Committee and Assembly Health and Human Services Committee hearing on
May 1, 2003.