Every once in a while, Colorado’s lawmakers reconsider caps placed on how much money victims of medical malpractice can be awarded in court. The process has created an arbitrary limit that soon falls behind the intended value of the awards.
So we were surprised to see what looked like an elegant solution to the problem die this week even before lawmakers debated its merits.
House Bill 1344 would have reset the amount of so-called non-economic, “pain and suffering” awards in medical malpractice lawsuits from the 2003 cap of $300,000. First capped in 1988, the awards remained at $250,000 all those years, despite values in current-day dollars steadily eroding due to inflation.
To fix that, HB 1344 proposed to recalibrate a new cap that brought the original $250,000 into today’s dollars, or about $460,000. Once reset, the measure would require the state to increase the award by the rate of inflation every year, effectively putting the process on autopilot.
But HB 1344’s sponsor, Rep. Christine Scanlan, D-Dillon, cut that measure during a committee hearing Monday, saying she couldn’t bring together doctors and trial lawyers to discuss it and adding that she doubted she had enough votes to pass it in the House, which seems odd.
Democrats control the chamber, and this would seem an issue tailor-made for them.
What’s even more odd, HB 1344 survives and contains a provision we can’t imagine makes good sense for Colorado.
The House Judiciary Committee passed the altered bill that would require insurers to prove they risk insolvency in order to raise their rates, and also to win approval from the state’s Division of Insurance to raise malpractice premiums by more than 5 percent.
That seems like a reckless solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
A version of this measure (Senate Bill 164) failed during last year’s session, and we opposed it because it would have restricted insurers from raising rates even while it raised the caps on awards — a move that risked breaking insurers.
The bill also would have created a new “economic damages” award to include disfigurement and impairment.
Proponents of HB 1344 tell us they were led to believe that if they stripped out the new “economic damages” award this session, the recalibration measure would be acceptable.
Apparently that’s not the case.
The process of setting caps on malpractice awards is meant to prevent headline-grabbing, out-of-control jury awards that might steer talented doctors away from Colorado.
But when doctors make mistakes, the victims deserve reasonable awards.
We encourage lawmakers to reopen the debate on recalibrating the “pain and suffering” cap next year and drop any interest in adding more regulation to the insurance industry.
