2006 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS; A LITIGATION AND HEALTH CARE CRISIS?

The President will be offering his State of the Union address tonight. As part of that address the President will once be claiming that frivolous court cases are clogging the courts resulting in increased numbers of court cases, overwhelmed judges and skyrocketing insurance costs.

How much of the President’s claim is supported in fact?

Not much according to none other than the very people at the heart of the matter: the Judges in the Courts themselves.

In a survey of 278 Federal Court Judges by the Federal Judicial Center, 70% of the Judges called frivolous court cases as “very small problem” with 15% saying frivolous court cases were “no problem” at all in the Courts. 91% of the Judges in fact opposed the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act that is being pushed by the White House. The Washington-based Federal Judicial Center is the research and education agency of the federal court system. "Report of a Survey of United States District Judges' Experiences and Views Concerning Rule 11, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure" is available at www.fjc.gov.

The President is also expected to claim that increasing number of tort (personal injury, medical malpractice) claims are overwhelming the nation’s courts. However, once again from the source itself, the Federal Justice Statistics Program reported that in actuality since 1985 the number of tort claims in court declined in numbers by 79%. Of the 512,000 federal court cases in 2002-2003, only 20% of those were tort claims and then of those, less than 2% or only 1,647 tort cases made it to a trial. Of those 1,647 cases, only 10% were medical malpractice cases. Of those few tort claims that did make it to trial, less than half were decided in favor of the injured Plaintiff. In medical malpractice claims, of that very few number that made it to trial, the injured Plaintiff lost 2 out of 3 times. [U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 08/05, NCJ208713]

Additionally the President is expected to claim that malpractice claims are the reason for rising health insurance costs. However the U.S. Congressional Budget office itself disputes this White House claim. The Congressional Budget Office has found that medical malpractice costs amount to less than 2% of the overall costs in health care spending. Even a reduction of 30% in malpractice costs would result in little effect to negligible effect on medical insurance costs. [Congressional Budget Office, “Limiting Tort Liability for Medical Malpractice,” 1/08/04] According to the Weiss Ratings, a non-partisan, independent financial ratings company, the main reasons for rising health insurance costs are the fact that medical insurance companies lost significant amounts of investment monies in the past decade’s stock market collapses. [Weiss Report 06/03]