Medical Malpractice: Lawmakers Need to Start with Insurance Reform
Charleston Gazette
December 31, 2002

By Gary Zuckett and Rebecca Hoffman. Zuckett is with the West Virginia Citizen Action Group. Hoffman is organizing director of Americans for Insurance Reform.

The story of Frank Cornelius is like that of many thousands of patients who are killed or injured each year as a result of medical negligence. In the early 1990s, after several shattering incidents of malpractice, Frank was catastrophically and permanently disabled, confined to a wheelchair and unable to even breathe without a respirator.

His daily life became consumed with constant pain. His medical expenses and lost wages amounted to over $ 5 million. (A recent Gazette editorial entitled "Horrifying: Deadly hospital errors" cited a study by the U.S. Institute of Medicine that estimates 98,000 American patients are killed by hospital errors each year, and more than 1 million are injured, resulting in a cost of $ 29 billion!)

While similar to the cases of many who suffer as a result of negligence by hospitals, doctors and other health-care professionals, Frank's case was different in one utterly tragic respect. As a lobbyist for Indiana's insurance industry, Frank had helped obtain passage of the very law that now prevented his obtaining anything close to adequate compensation for his ruined life, limiting damages to one-tenth of his costs and barring him from receiving any compensation at all for his pain and suffering.

. . .

Fortunately, a new grassroots coalition, Americans for Insurance Reform (AIR) is continuing Frank Cornelius' truth-seeking work. AIR, made up of 100 consumer groups (including WV Citizen Action) representing more than 50 million people, is fighting back against the insurance companies in order to protect the public interest.

For a copy of the complete article, contact AIR.