The State of Health Care: Republican Efforts for Health Care Reform
THE STATE OF HEALTH CARE: REPUBLICAN EFFORTS FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM -- (House of Representatives - March 07, 2006)
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Mrs. CAPITO. I thank my colleague from the Rules Committee, not only for talking about issues that are important to us but his service on the Rules Committee as well. And also the fact that we are taking this time to talk about an issue that is probably the most-talked about issue in my district and that is health care in a general sense, but in a broader sense health care for our future.
I come from the State of West Virginia, and I think this is a great topic for somebody from West Virginia to speak on. We have passed out of the House medical liability reform I think in excess of seven times and I have lost count. I do not know exactly. But I would like to talk a little bit about what happened in the State of West Virginia and how that legislature there and the Governor there joined together to answer a desperate cry from a lot of West Virginians.
In the summer of, I think it was, 2002, the only trauma center in the largest metropolitan area of our State, CAMC Trauma Center, closed because they were unable to staff the trauma center because people of the specialty and the hospital were having difficulty meeting the high cost of medical liability insurance. They could not get it. That traumatized our area. We live in a rural State; but this area, Charleston, was the magnet for all of southern West Virginia and eastern and western sides to come in case of a high-level trauma.
During this time, a young boy of 4 or 5 years old got a penny stuck in his throat, and he lived about 10 minutes away from the trauma center, but the trauma center was not there. It was not open. So his parents, along with their physician, had to take him to Cincinnati, Ohio, to have this extracted from his windpipe. It had a happy ending. He was fine, but if they had not had to take that amount of time to go to Cincinnati to have the work performed, I do not know what would have happened to this young boy.
Throughout 2002, I met more constituents who were telling me that their doctors, even though they were not old retirement-age doctors, middle age, in their fifties, in the peak of their profession, were moving. They were moving to other States. They were retiring out of the practice of medicine and into administration because they absolutely could not afford to continue practice. We were losing our specialty physicians. I know there is a problem nationwide with neurosurgeons, certainly orthopedists, OB-GYNs are one of the highest problem areas, and it was just cascading across our State.
We are known in our State as being one of the best places for trial lawyers to set up shop. We are very, what do I want to say, generous and we have a very good litigious society.
Mr. GINGREY. We like to use the expression in those situations: ``it is easier to sue your doctor than it is to see your doctor.''
Mrs. CAPITO. Right and we were reaching that point in West Virginia. We had our doctors leaving.
Another thing, I spent Sunday night with a group of physicians here in Washington, D.C., and one of the things they told me repeatedly, no matter what State they were practicing in, is that more and more they have got to practice defensive medicine. Are you going to do the MRI, Doctor?
And even though they do not think it is called for, it is not medically necessary, they go ahead and do it because if they do not do it, there is that small fraction of a chance that something might have shown up or that they could come back and be sued because they did not proceed with a procedure that they did not feel was medically necessary.
And what happens when you practice defensive medicine? The cost goes up and up and up. And this was happening in West Virginia. Again, our large medical centers, we could not recruit our doctors. We would have residencies throughout our State and as soon as the physicians were trained, educated, and ready to practice, they would leave the State. And this was really very difficult because the word was out across the Nation: West Virginia, if you want to practice medicine, do not go to West Virginia.
So we had all of this coupled with just the out-of-control lawyer compensation that this breeds, this medical liability breeds.
So we had this kind of situation in West Virginia and what happened? It was not the doctors. It was not the hospitals. It was not the health professionals. It was the everyday citizen in West Virginia coming to policy-makers, coming to their State legislators, coming to their Governor, coming to their Congresspeople and saying, you have got to do something. You have got to pass something. And by golly, in the State of West Virginia they have passed one of the leading, cutting-edge medical liability bills that exists now in any States in the Union.
And what has happened? Confidence is back in the health professions, more specialties are being recruited into our State. And just today I had a young man in my office who was just finishing his residency at Lexington, Kentucky. He said, I am coming home to West Virginia because that is where I want to raise my family and practice medicine.
So medical liability does work. It does go to providing higher-quality care, refreshing your physician and health profession supply. It does go to bringing about an era of confidence that good-quality health care is going to be there for you. And so I would say in terms of, I know Dr. Gingrey has introduced the HEALTH Act again, and we are hoping that we will pass it out of the House of Representatives again, we will do that because we know it is important. But more and more what is happening in West Virginia is happening in other States across the Nation. And they are hearing from their everyday citizens, their folks who want to see their doctor when they want to see them, the doctor they have seen their whole life. And this is an extremely important issue to have before the American public.
The problem has been we have passed it here, and we have not heard anything more about it. It had faded out there across the Hall. I think the stronger the voices are at the local level, just like they were in West Virginia where we did not think it could ever be done, the stronger those voices are, the more optimism we can have, we can meet the demands of a good and solid medical liability reform bill.
I want to join with my colleagues here on the Health Affairs Team who think it is something we need to talk
about quite a bit.
If I could take just 2 more minutes here to talk about another health issue that is extremely important to me, and that is the prescription drug bill for seniors. It is something I worked on, and it is probably the number one issue as I have moved across the State over the last 5 years.
I was sitting in a dinner the other night after reading all the political rhetoric about the prescription drug bill and how it does not serve people, and actually one of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle in my own State called it a national disaster. I sat down next to a gentleman. He said, I want to talk to you about the prescription drug bill. I almost thought I had to put a helmet on to hear what he had to say. I said, What is that? He said, I am going to save $4,000 this year. Thank you, Congresswoman, for passing that. Thank you for providing that first-time availability of a prescription drug bill through Medicare.
I want those who are watching to know this is an extremely revolutionary bill and an availability of a prescription drug bill for our seniors.
Doctor, I would like to yield back my time to you. I appreciate your efforts in this area, and I join with you in seeing that we get that medical liability reform bill passed once again.
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