Medical Care Access Protection Act of 2006--Motion to Proceed

MEDICAL CARE ACCESS PROTECTION ACT OF 2006--MOTION TO PROCEED

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from Pennsylvania for his observations, not only about the state of medical care access in Pennsylvania, but across the Nation. I would like to make some observations about the situation in Kentucky and across the Nation as well.

I am obviously here to support the Medical Care Access Protection Act. On several occasions in recent years this body has attempted to debate commonsense reforms to our medical liability system--a system that we all know is increasing health care costs and limiting patients' access to care.

Unfortunately, the minority party's obsession with obstructionism has prevented this body from even considering medical liability reform. But the problem of patients not getting the care they need is simply not going to go away on its own. The Senate needs to act, and act now.

Passing the Medical Care Access Protection Act would leave doctors free to go where the patients are, not just where the lawyers aren't. Let me turn briefly to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Like 20 other States across our Nation, we, in Kentucky, are facing a medical liability crisis. In past years, I have shared stories of doctors who left Kentucky, of hospitals that have closed their maternity wards, and of women who have been denied access to care because their doctors could no longer afford the medical liability premiums.

I wish I could tell my colleagues that I was out of such stories; that the problem had fixed itself. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The minority has not allowed this body to act, and the problem has not gone away. So today I would like to share a story that ran earlier this year in my hometown newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, back on January 29.

Rashelle Perryman's first two babies were born at Crittenden County Hospital in Marion, KY, about 10 minutes from her home. But her third child, due in June, is to be born in Madisonville, 40 miles away in Hopkins County, because rising malpractice insurance rates caused doctors at the Crittenden County Hospital to stop delivering babies last year.

That forced the hospital to drop obstetrical services and Ms. Perryman to find a new doctor.

``I don't like it at all,'' she said about having to give birth in another county. She's a nurse at Crittenden County Hospital and its former obstetrics supervisor.

So she knows a good bit about the subject matter.

With Perryman's first two deliveries, ``I knew everybody here in the hospital, and I was comfortable,'' she said. ``And now I am going somewhere where I don't know anybody, or how anything's done.''

Ms. Perryman will have to travel a long 40 miles to deliver her child. Just to put her plight in perspective, 40 miles is about the same distance from the Capitol to downtown Baltimore. I know we will all hope for a safe delivery for Ms. Perryman, but what if there are complications along the way? Wouldn't it be better for both Ms. Perryman and her baby if they could still go to their local hospital, rather than driving 40 miles down the road?

Would any Member of the Senate want his wife, or his or her daughter, to have to drive as far as Baltimore in a similar circumstance?

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated problem within this one Kentucky community. Our Lady of Bellefonte in Ashland, KY, and Knox County Hospital in eastern Kentucky have also stopped delivering babies. They are not delivering babies anymore. Patients in west Kentucky who need the services of an emergency neurosurgeon frequently must be transferred to St. Louis or Nashville because there are not enough neurosurgeons to staff the hospitals in Paducah around the clock.

From 2000 to 2004, the number of practicing OB/GYNs in the country fell from 504 to 473. Among those OB/GYNs who have remained in the State, fewer and fewer of them are still willing to deliver babies. Even among those who are staying in the State, fewer of them are willing to deliver babies.

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology report that 18 percent of Kentucky OB/GYNs have stopped delivering babies entirely. Nearly one-third of OB/GYNs, 31 percent, have limited the number of ``high-risk'' expectant mothers they will see for liability reasons.

So even among those who are still willing to deliver babies, they are sort of preselecting the mothers based upon the riskiness of the procedure and parceling out those who are more risky to someone else or some other community or whoever will accept the liability potential.

The Kentucky Medical Association reviewed State and hospital records and found that only 426 doctors in Kentucky delivered babies last year. That is down 79 doctors from 1 year before.

Let me say that again. We have in Kentucky gone down to 426 doctors who delivered babies last year, down 79 from the year before.

As I have noted in the past, 66 of Kentucky's 120 counties have no OB/GYNs at all. The red counties on the map, all across my State, from east to far west--the red counties have no OB/GYNs at all; 66 out of 120 counties. Over half of our counties have no OB/GYNs at all.

What does this mean to the patients? I think it is rather obvious. It means that patients such as Ms. Perryman, on one of the most challenging but important days of her life, will need to travel far from home to deliver her baby.

This problem extends far beyond Kentucky's borders. In his State of the Union Address this year, President Bush noted that 1,500 American counties have no OB/GYN. So these 66 counties in Kentucky are not unique; 1,500 counties across America don't have a single OB/GYN.

As the map next to me shows, the American Medical Association reports that 21 States are now facing a full-blown medical liability crisis.

The red States have a full-blown medical liability crisis--21 of them. A few years ago, there were just 12. You will notice Texas, Mr. President? Texas is an interesting State to note. It is getting itself out of the crisis stage, heading in the direction of being a State not in crisis, as a direct result of legislation similar to what we are suggesting be enacted on the Federal level.

So we know the Texas reforms work because we see Texas now moving from a State in crisis to a State that is effectively reforming and basically halting the crisis.

An example of a State with a serious problem still is Arizona. Some of my colleagues might recall the story of one Arizonan, Melinda Sallard, from a few years ago. In 2002, the administrators at Copper Queen Community Hospital College in Brisbee, AZ, were forced to close their maternity ward because their doctors' insurance premiums had risen by 500 percent; 500 percent. A few months later, Melinda awoke at 2 o'clock in the morning with sharp labor pains. Since her local hospital stopped delivering babies because of the medical liability crisis, Melinda and her husband were faced with a 45-mile drive to Sierra Vista in order to reach the nearest hospital with a maternity ward.

As many of us who are parents know, babies don't always wait for the hospital, particularly when that hospital is almost an hour away.

Melinda gave birth to her daughter in a car on a desert highway leading to Sierra Vista.

When the child was born, she wasn't breathing. Her levelheaded mother cleared the child's mouth and performed CPR. After resuscitating the infant, Melinda wrapped her in a sweater, and the new family completed the journey to Sierra Vista.

Thankfully, both mother and daughter survived. However, it is clearly unacceptable that expectant mothers should be forced to drive past a perfectly good hospital and continue on 45 miles through the desert to deliver a child.

We have here a picture of the mother and daughter, and in that particular instance, because of a particularly alert mother, we were able to avert a crisis.

There are commonsense reforms the Senate can adopt that will lower medical liability premiums and allow doctors to continue their lifesaving work. In past years, the Senate has considered legislation modeled after the successful MICRA reforms out in California that have contained medical liability premiums for more than 25 years. I have supported those efforts, but we are taking a different approach this year and we are modeling this legislation offered by Senators SANTORUM, ENSIGN, and GREGG on the Texas reforms to which I referred a few moments ago. The Texas reforms are a little more generous, and they also are clearly working to get the right result.

It is important to remember that under any of this legislation, patients would be allowed to recover 100 percent of their economic damages. This can include hospital bills, lost wages, therapy, and rehabilitation costs, and a wide variety of additional expenses a victim might incur.

In an attempt to reach a compromise on the contentious issue of non-economic damages, the Medical Care Access Act includes, as I said, Texas's tiered cap on non-economic damages that could allow a patient to recover as much as three-quarters of a million dollars. That is three times the amount of non-economic damages that was available under legislation we previously considered here in this Senate.

Our colleagues across the aisle have indicated they would not consider legislation that would limit non-economic damages at $250,000. This bill does not have that limitation. Hopefully, a limitation on non-economic damages alone of three-quarters of a million dollars will be more acceptable.

This legislation also includes important reforms, such as ``fair share liability,'' limits on lawyers' fees, and collateral source reforms that have been a part of previous proposals here in the Senate.

This problem is not going to go away on its own. The Senate has an opportunity to act. I hope we will, in fact, vote cloture and get to this legislation. If there are amendments to be offered, fine. Let us have votes and move in the direction of addressing this serious national health care problem.

I yield the floor.

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