Columnist Margaret Carlson writes a scathing review of tort reform in Bloomberg News, saying that, “in practice, tort reform has proved to be just another corporate protection racket.” She sites Texas’ capping wrongful death damages at $500,000 and non-economic damages at $250,000, and points to cases such as a Nebraska family that was awarded $1.25 million for a child that was born with brain damage, a sum total that does not cover the lifetime care of the child, leaving taxpayers to pay through Medicare.
In conclusion she says that “many tort-reform efforts apply an ax to problems better suited to a scalpel…A little bit of tort reform probably would’ve been a good thing. But lawsuits are one of the few ways to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. Doctors inevitable resist oversight just as corporations resist regulations.”
