Sarah Palin Was Right #5: Peggy Venable on Tort Reform

In a Thursday Washington Post op-ed, Peggy Venable, the Texas director of Americans for Prosperity, says there's no need for pilot projects to test tort reform like the ones President Obama alluded to in his speech to Congress last week:

Texas enacted malpractice reform years ago. The president would benefit from a phone call to Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R).

Texas passed significant tort reform in 1995, and more reforms have been enacted since then. A 2008 study from the Perryman Group found that perhaps the most visible economic impact of the lawsuit reforms are the benefits experienced by Texans who have better access to high-quality healthcare. Doctors and hospitals are using their liability insurance savings to expand services and initiate innovative programs; those savings have allowed Texas hospitals to expand charity care by 24 percent.

The total impact of tort reforms implemented since 1995 includes gains of $112.5 billion in spending each year as well as almost 499,900 jobs in the state. The fiscal stimulus to the state from judicial reforms is almost a $2.6 billion per year increase in state revenue. In addition, these reforms are responsible for approximately 430,000 individuals having health insurance than would otherwise, and there has been an increase in the number of doctors, particularly in regions which have been facing severe shortages.

Sarah Palin had already pointed to the success of the Texas example August 21 on her Facebook Notes page:

Texas enacted caps and found that one county’s medical malpractice claims dropped 41 percent, and another study found a "55 percent decline" after reform measures were passed. That’s one step in health care reform. Limiting lawyer contingency fees, as is done under the Federal Tort Claims Act, is another step. The State of Alaska pioneered the "loser pays" rule in the United States, which deters frivolous civil law suits by making the loser partially pay the winner’s legal bills. Preventing quack doctors from giving "expert" testimony in court against real doctors is another reform.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry noted that, after his state enacted tort reform measures, the number of doctors applying to practice medicine in Texas "skyrocketed by 57 percent" and that the tort reforms "brought critical specialties to underserved areas." These are real reforms that actually improve access to health care.

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There should be no health care reform without legal reform. There can be no true health care reform without legal reform.

Ms. Venable is right to cite Texas as a model of serious tort reform for the rest of the nation, but Sarah Palin had already gone there weeks ago. Again, former Governor Palin is showing the kind of leadership that we haven't seen enough of in the Republican Party, pointing to real-world examples of successful solutions to the problems the nation faces.

- JP