By Matt Sepic, KWMU
St. Louis, MO. – President Bush will be in the Metro East Wednesday morning.
Mr. Bush will use the visit to call for major changes in medical malpractice litigation.
The president and his supporters in the business and medical communities say lawsuits in Madison County are out of control, and doctors are leaving because of high malpractice insurance rates.
But Nicolas Terry disagrees. He heads Saint Louis University's Center for Health Law Studies.
"The cost of medical malpractice insurance tends to be a function of insurance underwriting cycles, and is more tightly interwoven with more general economic conditions than it has any direct coupling with tort verdicts," Terry said.
The president may also touch on changes he wants in asbestos litigation.
Advocates of tort reform say asbestos cases make up a large number of the cases that have no business being tried in Madison County.