Providing For Consideration of H.R. 1215, Protecting Access to Care Act of 2017
Floor Speech
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I am not an attorney either, Mr. Speaker. I am a physician. As a matter of fact, I am an obstetrician. I think, of all the professions impacted by malpractice issues, perhaps, Mr. Speaker, obstetricians have been the most impacted.
I remember going back as a medical student and trying to figure out what type of doctor I wanted to become. My wife and I were blessed somewhere in there to have our first child. I remember when that little girl was given to me and I heard her cry, it was maybe the greatest single moment of my life.
As a young medical student, I was very impressed and said: That is what I want to do. I want to bring babies into the world and have that moment when I get to give a baby to a mom and she looks at that baby and it is just a very special moment. It is just the most agape love I have ever seen, a mom with a perfect heart towards that little baby.
I wanted to do that.
So I started telling my professors I wanted to be an obstetrician.
Every professor I met said: Don't do it. You are going to get sued.
Malpractice prices are screaming. You are not going to like that job anymore. No one wants to go into obstetrics.
Well, guess what? My professors were right. I did it anyway.
The average obstetrician gets sued between three and four times in their career. Malpractice remains the biggest deterrent of physicians choosing to go into obstetrics. The average obstetrician has to spend 2 to 3 months every year just to pay for their malpractice insurance.
I am very blessed. Over 20 years ago, Kansas undertook similar tort reform as this, and our malpractice costs have stabilized. My malpractice insurance was pretty much the same 20 years after we enacted the legislation to curb some of these costs.
I think it will be true for me to say that my friends that are obstetricians in other States without malpractice tort reform, their premiums are often three times higher than ours in Kansas. We have seen this work very, very well in Kansas. The good news is that this legislation will not impact any of that work as well.
I very much am in favor of this malpractice tort reform and how it is going to impact healthcare. I predict that this will help lower premium costs some 3 to 4 percent when enacted.
Malpractice is a huge cost of the current cost of healthcare. This is a first step of many that Republicans are encouraging or want to implement to start lowering those costs of premiums.
Small Business Association members were here in D.C. just 2 months ago. When they walked out of that meeting, I was expecting them to come back and tell me their concerns were mostly regulatory concerns, but their number one concern was the cost of healthcare premiums.
This is a small step. If we can lower their healthcare costs 3 to 4 percent, this is a great, great opportunity for us to help them out.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to support this bill. I encourage Members on both sides of the aisle to support this bill. It should be bipartisan support for this legislation that will help drive healthcare costs down.
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