Today’s topic: Health-care costs

The Tennessean
Tuesday, January 28, 2003

 
Tearful victims of medical malpractice brought their campaign against capping malpractice awards to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's hometown yesterday and apparently will have a fight in the Tennessee legislature as well as in Congress.

Lobbyists for Tennessee doctors and hospitals already are working on state legislation, patterned after a federal proposal, to set a $250,000 limit on non-economic damages in malpractice cases. Non-economic damages include such things as pain and suffering, which cannot be measured as easily as financial losses.

Members of the Center for Justice & Democracy, a national consumer organization, met with Frist staff members after a news conference at the Legislative Plaza. Frist is backing the $250,000 cap in Congress. 

Representatives of the consumer group, which are taking their message on a nationwide bus tour, held a news conference at the Legislative Plaza. Among the participants were the parents of Amanda Travis, 5, who checked into Nashville's Parkside Surgery Center in 1991 for a routine tonsillectomy and died, her mother said, after she was given the wrong drugs.

"I lost a 5-year-old who was very vibrant," Tammy Travis said. "She had an earning capacity of $250,000 to $300,000 a year. She could sing at the age of three. I wake up every morning and look at her picture. She would have been a senior in high school this year."
For a copy of the complete article, contact CJ&D.

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