In last night's State of the Union, President Obama seemed to support medical malpractice reform, and Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce cheered. I'm going to take a Missouri-esque "Show Me" attitude. Obama's one sentence on the subject was "I'm willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs, including one Republicans suggested last year—medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits." The catch there (aside from the lukewarm "I'm willing to look at") is "frivolous lawsuits," an amorphous term that can be narrowly constructed to the point of pointlessness for any reform. Remember that even John Kerry and John Edwards proposed limiting frivolous lawsuits in medical malpractice suits in their 2004 campaign, and the details demonstrated that they proposed exactly nothing that would reduce costs or the lawsuits that doctors consider "frivolous."
Obama's SOTU medical malpractice plank
Related Entries:
- Medical malpractice reform passes House
- Federal constitutional challenge to Texas tort reform rejected
- HR 5
- Reuters fact check
- Obama State of the Union speech
- A separate thought on Farber-White and medical malpractice
- A shocking concession by Svorny on medical malpractice caps
- Spirited med-mal debate complete!
- Marie Gryphon cited for work on loser pays
- New Featured Discussion: MI and Cato scholars debate med-mal
- Arafiles update
- Liability for thee, but not for me
- Obama's American Jobs Act to create lawyer jobs
- KBR seeking loser-pays against Jamie Leigh Jones
- Texas tort reform could be a 2012 issue
![]() |
| Isaac Gorodetski Project Manager, Center for Legal Policy at the Manhattan Institute igorodetski@manhattan-institute.org |
![]() |
| Laura Eyi Press Officer, Manhattan Institute leyi@manhattan-institute.org |



