New Report Says 'Health Courts' Bureaucracies Offer Big Financial Burdens and Loss of Pati...( Ill-conceived Insurance Industry ...),Health

Ill-conceived Insurance Industry Proposal Is 'Bad Public Policy'

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --- A groundbreaking new report on health courts by Case Western Reserve University professors Max Mehlman and Dale Nance finds that health courts would be burdensome, prohibitively expensive and would come at the expense of injured patients.

The report prepared under a grant from the American Association for Justice Robert L. Habush Endowment, finds that health courts would require the creation of new and costly bureaucracies that would be controlled at every level by the insurance industry.

For more information, see the full Executive Summary: http://www.justice.org/pressroom/PressReleases/ExecutiveSummary.pdf.

View the Health Courts fact sheet: http://www.justice.org/pressroom/PressReleases/HealthCourts.doc.

Proposals to create special "health courts" are the latest in a series of attempts to eliminate or drastically reduce the rights of injured patients.

"This report exposes the health insurance industry's latest attempt to deprive patients of their rights," said American Association for Justice CEO Jon Haber. "Not only will so-called health courts force patients to seek compensation from bureaucracies dominated by unaccountable insurance companies, but they will also drive up costs. In the end, patients will not be safer and negligent hospitals and doctors will not be held accountable for medical errors."

The report finds many critical flaws in the health courts concept, including:

-- The new health courts bureaucracies would place a massive financial

burden on taxpayers and the employers and employees that pay for

health care insurance.

-- The decision making process would be control
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