Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-Cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act of 2005

HELP EFFICIENT, ACCESSIBLE, LOW-COST, TIMELY HEALTHCARE (HEALTH) ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - July 28, 2005)

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Mr. BURGESS. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time to speak on this important issue today.

Mr. Speaker, we, of course, passed this bill some 2 years ago last March. Down in Texas we passed a bill 2 years ago this September and a constitutional amendment that would essentially provide the same type of cap on noneconomic damages that we are discussing here today in H.R. 5.

It has been said before that the States are great laboratories for the Nation. If that is the case, let us examine what has happened in Texas in the 2 years since the cap has been passed. When I ran for Congress in the year 2002, we started the year 2002 with 17 insurers in the State of Texas. By the time I took this office at the start of 2003, we were down to two insurers. It is pretty hard to get competitive rates when you have driven 15 insurers out of the market. Since the passage of the Proposition 12 in September of 2003, which allowed a cap on noneconomic damages, we have had 12 insurers come back to the State, which has provided competitive rates, and Texas Medical Liability Trust, my old insurer of record before I left medical practice, immediately dropped its rates 12 percent after the passage of Proposition 12 and then dropped its rates another 5 percent for a total of 17 percent in the first year since Proposition 12 was passed.

Most importantly, Mr. Speaker, an unintended consequence of the passage of Proposition 12 in Texas was what has happened in private, not-for-profit hospitals.

The Cristus Health Care System in south Texas, a self-insured hospital system, realized a $12 million savings from the first 9 months after that proposition was passed, money that was put back into nurses' salaries, capital expansion, the very things we want our hospitals to spend money on if they were not having to pay it for noneconomic damages.

And, finally, I just cannot let pass the statement about price controls. Physicians have lived under price controls, certainly all of my professional career, for the last 25 years. We have managed, sometimes poorly. But what happens when we have price controls is we end up with lines, and one of the biggest problems we have right now is that doctors are dropping out of practice, and we do not have the practitioners there to provide care for the patients.

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