Who Benefits from the 2003 Texas Medical Malpractice Tort Reform Law? | DENENA | POINTS
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Who Benefits from the 2003 Texas Medical Malpractice Tort Reform Law?

Personal injury lawyer for The Woodlands, TX explains the Texas medical malpractice tort reform law of 2003. The 2003 tort reform law set a cap on your recovery for non-economic damages from an injury caused by medical malpractice. Your non-economic damages include pain and suffering.

  • The tort reform law’s cap limits your damages to $250,000 from each health care provider responsible for your injuries. You have a maximum potential recovery of $750,000. Before the 2003 tort reform law, juries could award injured victims millions of dollars in non-economic damages where the facts of the case warranted it. Economic damages such as medical expenses and lost wages remain uncapped.
  • Your personal injury lawyer for The Woodlands, TX notes that Texas medical malpractice liability insurance premiums have fallen by more than 50%. The Texas Medical Liability Trust is a self-insurance group owned by the physicians it covers. The Trust stands as Texas’ largest provider of medical malpractice liability coverage.
  • The premiums the Trust collected for medical malpractice liability coverage between 2003 and 2010 reflect an alarming 50%+ decrease in the coverage. Your personal injury lawyer for The Woodlands, TX believes that this sharp drop in coverage shows that doctors believe they no longer need medical malpractice liability coverage. These physicians no longer feel the need to protect themselves from the costly consequences of injuring you with their errors.
  • Texas medical malpractice liability payments by insurers have plummeted even more: from $247 million in 2003 to just $87 million in 2010. The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen pinpointed the reason for this vast decrease in Texas medical malpractice liability payments since the tort reform law took effect. Public Citizen said the drop demonstrates that Texas doctors benefit from lesser accountability for their errors and use of defective medical devices than their peers elsewhere in the nation.

The bottom line reveals that the medical and insurance industries, the very groups that promoted the tort reform law in the first place, also reap the benefits from the law. They win; you lose. Your personal injury lawyer for The Woodlands reminds you that “reform” isn’t always what it seems.