How Not to Do Medical Malpractice Reform: A Florida Case Study
51 Pages Posted: 23 Oct 2007 Last revised: 16 Nov 2007
Abstract
This article does a thick description of a process of attempted medical malpractice reform in Florida, from the background legislation through the use of the constitutional initiative process by various stakeholders to the legislative and judicial responses to these new constitutional provisions. It draws on interviews with leaders of all the major stakeholder groups, including the medical association, the trial lawyers, the hospital association and the malpractice insurance industry, to explore how various legal and political processes were used to further or impede ideological agendas.
It also closely examines each of the initiatives - limits on contingency fees, licensure revocation for repeated malpractice judgments, and patients' rights of access to peer review information - exploring how they might have affected the health care and malpractice systems had they been implemented as presumably envisioned by the Florida voters who put them into the Constitution.
Keywords: medical malpractice, legislation, initiatives, politics
JEL Classification: I18, K13, K40
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation