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

Coombs, Mary Irene, How Not to Do Medical Malpractice Reform: A Florida Case Study. University of Miami Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2007-12, Health Matrix: Journal of Law-Medicine, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1023780

Mary Irene Coombs (Contact Author)

University of Miami School of Law ( email )

P.O. Box 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33146
United States

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