Crs Report for Congress

Medical malpractice liability is governed by state law, but Congress has the power, under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Art. I, 8, cl. 3) to regulate it. On March 13, 2003, the House passed H.R. 5, 108th Congress, which would preempt state law with respect to certain aspects of medical malpractice lawsuits. H.R. 5 finds “that the health care liability system is a costly and ineffective mechanism for resolving claims of health care liability and compensating injured patients.” It seeks to prevent the decreased availability of medical services, “reduce the incidence of defensive medicine’ and lower the cost of health care liability insurance, all of which contribute to the escalation of health care costs.” Opponents of medical malpractice reforms have argued that “there is a very minimal relationship between health care costs and malpractice litigation,” and that, “[a]s the Harvard Medical Practice Study reported in 1990, … about one in eight negligently injured patients file a malpractice claim. The study’s authors concluded that we do not now have a problem of too many claims; if anything, there are too few.‘” This report does not address the question of the effects of medical malpractice litigation, or …