This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 10, 2010 - Last Thursday, the Illinois Supreme Court issued a ruling striking down established caps on financial awards juries can award in medical malpractice lawsuits. Their ruling was a huge blow to efforts to provide health care throughout Illinois, as doctors will flee the state due to skyrocketing malpractice insurance cots.
Historically this was the case. Prior to the law imposing caps on non-economic damages, our health-care system was in crisis. Doctors were fleeing, especially those in high-risk specialties such as obstetrics - leaving pregnant women in many areas of the state without care.
Putting the caps into place in 2005 allowed doctors to stay in Illinois instead of fleeing to neighboring states like Missouri and Indiana. Doctors were, and are, returning. In fact just two years after the law was enacted, 5,000 more doctors were licensed in Illinois; three new insurance companies were offering coverage and 10 existing insurers dropped their rates by 5 to more than 30 percent. The Supreme Court's ruling will no doubt have a negative impact on the number of good, qualified physicians we can bring to Illinois.
The ruling will also directly impact the state's economic situation, as good jobs will also be forced out of the state as doctors leave. When we passed the caps law in 2005, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce noted that when a family physician leaves a state 50 other good paying professional jobs disappear. Illinois is not in a position where it can afford to throw jobs away to neighboring states. These settlement caps are needed now more than ever.
This ruling was a thinly veiled attack by the trial lawyers within Illinois. It is no secret the trial lawyers objected to any sorts of caps on medical malpractice settlements. The ruling by the Democratic controlled Supreme Court was their method of striking down a law they disagreed with. It could undo all of the progress we have made to increase families' access for health care for the sake of putting more money back into the pockets of trial lawyers.
My colleagues and I don't plan on accepting this ruling and walking away from the idea of caps on medical malpractice lawsuits. The simple fact of the matter is that settlement caps are needed to keep professionally trained physicians in our local areas. Thirty other states impose some form of limits on medical damage awards. We are working to determine a course of action to prevent another health care crisis.
I am not pleased with this ruling, but it currently is the hand we have been dealt by the Democratic controlled Supreme Court and the Illinois trial lawyers. Hopefully we will be able to bring about the needed change to properly reform the health-care system in Illinois before the doctors begin to leave and the citizens begin to suffer. However, I fear the damage this ruling will cause to the health-care sector within Illinois.
Ron Stephens, a Republican, represents the 102nd House district in Illinois. He is a pharmacist.