Plenty has been said about the role that nationwide tort reform could or should play in health care reform debate. The discussion has prompted many to take a look at the Texas experience, where wide-ranging tort reform was implemented in 2003. Among other things, state law in Texas limits noneconomic damages like pain and suffering to $250,000.

Proponents of the reforms point to the influx of medical doctors who have relocated to Texas since 2003 and a decline in medical liability insurance rates and liability lawsuit filings. Critics note that health care costs continue to escalate and that tort reform has made it difficult if not impossible for many legitimate lawsuits to proceed, while the noneconomic caps are onerous to the poor, the young and the elderly because they have little to show for lost earning ability necessary to calculate economic damages. With health care reform front-and-center, we asked some of the state's top attorneys about the Texas tort reform model and how it might affect health care reform if emulated nationwide. Not surprisingly, we got three distinct and different perspectives.

Big Verdicts Still Possible Under Tort Reform, MedMal Caps
Even in a state such as Texas with caps on punitive damages in medical malpractice cases, large verdicts can still occur. "Once tort reform passed, we saw an immediate drop in lawsuits, but the number of filings began to rise as both plaintiff and defense attorneys learned the new rules and courts began interpreting the practical limits of the new rules," says Linda Stimmel of Stewart Stimmel LLP, a Dallas-based firm focused on health care law. "It is not a perfect system, but it has been very beneficial in reducing the number of frivolous lawsuits, allowing reasonable settlements because of the defined limits and allowing physicians to practice medicine without going broke trying to pay their insurance premiums." 

Lawsuit Caps No Prescription for Healthcare Troubles
One look at the six years of tort reform in Texas should convince President Obama that the idea of national medical malpractice reform is a bad one, says nationally recognized trial attorney Mark Lanier of The Lanier Law Firm. "Doctors and insurance companies claimed tort reform was the cure for our state's healthcare problems, but six years of rising healthcare costs are all we have to show for it," says Lanier, who also disagrees with the President's hypothetical of keeping medical malpractice cases out of courtrooms by assigning them to special review panels. "Our founding fathers got it right by trusting juries to settle disputes rather than politicians or hired committees," he says.

Healthcare Tort Law Best Left to States
Tort reform in Texas provides some valuable lessons for any federal healthcare reform package. "If there were to be federal legislation in an area, I think some aspects of the Texas medical malpractice laws are good," says defense attorney John Martin of Dallas' Thompson & Knight and incoming president of the Lawyers for Civil Justice. "I think the informed consent and expert reports parts are good, although the expert reports concept could be written much better than the one we have in Texas so that less litigation is required. However, my personal belief is that tort law should be handled at the state level, not the federal level."