News in brief - May 16, 2005

CMS chief says liability reform would help Medicare - Ariz. tort reform signed into law - Bills would expand stem cell funding

CMS chief says liability reform would help Medicare

Capping noneconomic damages in medical liability suits would help control rapidly rising Medicare outpatient spending, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, told a congressional hearing last month.

"As we work on solutions to the physician payment problem, we can no longer afford to pass by opportunities where there is overwhelming evidence of billions of dollars in cost savings," Dr. McClellan told the Joint Economic Committee.

Federal officials surmise that an increase in physician services costs in Medicare last year are due in part to the practice of defensive medicine.

The Bush administration and the AMA support legislation that would attempt to address this issue by limiting the amount a jury could award a plaintiff for noneconomic damages stemming from a medical injury.

Ariz. tort reform signed into law

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano signed medical liability legislation last month that tightens rules on expert witness testimony and allows physicians to express sympathy to patients without having it used against them in court.

The Arizona Medical Assn., which supported the bill, also had proposed a provision that would have allowed the defense attorney to speak with any of the plaintiffs' previous treating physicians without the plaintiff's permission. But that provision was dropped from the bill's final version. The medical association plans to push for that change in 2006, and it is laying the groundwork for a lobbying effort to set a cap on noneconomic damages, officials said.

Bills would expand stem cell funding

Congressional lawmakers have introduced bipartisan legislation that would allow federal funding for research on new stem cell lines but explicitly ban human cloning.

The companion House and Senate bills also would prohibit the purchase or sale of unfertilized eggs and impose ethical requirements on scientists. Civil penalties for breaking the ethics rules would be up to $250,000 per violation. Criminal penalties for trying to clone humans could include up to 10 years in prison.

"Stem cell research is the bright new frontier of medicine," said Dianne Feinstein (D, Calif.), a sponsor of the bill. "But federal inaction has created a void, and this void has been only partially filled by states and by private entities."