Tort Reform in the News

When I finally understood that tort reform was likely the reason why no lawyer could take my case, I said lots of bad words right out loud.

There is only one thing any American needs to know about tort reform laws as they apply to the injured: they are discriminatory. We need to come up with REAL solutions to the problems that tort reform supposedly addresses AND REAL solutions to helping harmed patients. REAL SOLUTIONS MEANS THEY ARE EFFECTIVE AND DO NOT CREATE MORE PROBLEMS. REAL SOLUTIONS ARE FAIR. (Those are a lot of bold, italicized, and capitalized words - must be important!)

The purpose of this page is not to go down the rabbit hole of trying to learn every little thing there is about tort reform unless that floats your boat. But I do recommend learning just enough to understand your situation if you have one or so that you can make informed choices when you vote for politicians running on tort reform agendas.

If you are new to the concept of tort reform, it may be confusing at first. Don't worry - you're right on track. We're not supposed to be able to understand this, and most people don't know it exists - even if they are a victim of it. This is why an awareness campaign (#ReformTortReform) is important.

A BRIEF UNDERSTANDING OF TORT REFORM

Tort reform laws prevent fair access to court and fair compensation for harm done not only of medical negligence victims, although that's what I'm mainly focused on, but of all types of personal injury situations including sexual assault.

The discriminatory laws enable businesses to be unaccountable to their injured consumers and patients, but it goes beyond that. More people are injured by repeat offenders who aren't required to accept responsibility. I can attest to this multiplying effect where I know of at least one more person who was negligently injured after I was by the same abusive surgeon who injured me. Had the hospital corporation taken action when I reported the surgeon, the patient would not have been injured.

Tort reform is alive and well in a majority of states across America, yet some states have deemed it unconstitutional (thank you!!). Still, there is almost a constant challenge within non-reform states to implement reform measures and in reform states to strengthen laws. In other words, no state is immune which means that you and I and our families are also not immune.

One thing that confused me was that I didn't realize there are two sides of the tort reform coin: 1) those for tort reform (insurance companies, large business groups, defendant lawyers, healthcare groups, pro-business politicians, and lobbyists on behalf of of the aforementioned groups), and 2) those for patient rights (consumer and patient advocacy groups, pro-citizen politicians, plaintiff lawyers, lobbyists on behalf of the aforementioned groups, and - of course - the injured and their loved ones who too often have little to no recourse when faced with tort reform laws).

If you are interested in learning about the genesis of tort reform see my resources page for the link to the documentary film Hot Coffee.

HOW THIS PAGE WORKS

We are going to get glimpses and insights through the AI crystal ball to see where articles in the news align or distort regarding truth and fairness. We will accomplish this by running accuracy and bias checks via Google's A.I. function, Chat GPT. You will quickly start to recognize tort reform lingo that is often misleading and propagandic in nature. The A.I. analyses are good at calling it out and breaking it down for us.

Here is the strategy:

Unless otherwise noted, the same exact prompt for each article will be used: "Please analyze this article for accuracy and bias."
I will share a link to each news article and a corresponding link to the A.I. analysis that's downloaded onto a Google Doc with no tampering of information.
I will limit this page to no more than a dozen articles at one time. Older entries will be deleted to make room.
Because this is a not-so-nice subject, I reserve the right to share good news and videos that have nothing to do with malpractice. ;) These will be displayed in green.

Know that:

1) A.I. sometimes makes mistakes. However, A.I. is likely to be less mistake-prone or biased than we humans.

2) My Google search for articles reveals a heavy trend toward those mainly written by people and groups that favor tort reform. There's a reason for this - follow the money. (See above for a reminder of who is on each side of the tort reform coin.)