KraftLaw Newsletter

The consumer group Texas Watch issued a press release recently that seems to validate the warnings that so many personal injury lawyers made before Texas voters fell for the big insurance companies' propaganda and saddled us all with Proposition 12 in 2003. Here is the press release:

Underserved Areas Still Struggle to Attract New Doctors, Medical Liability Premiums Still Inflated, Patients Still at Risk

Proposition 12, passed in 2003, placed arbitrarily strict limits on non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits. As a result, many patients have seen their ability to hold a negligent doctor or hospital accountable severely limited if not altogether eliminated.

Voters were told by the insurance industry and their special interest groups that they had to choose between access to health care and their constitutional protections. Texas Watch’s report details how this was a false choice because Texans should be able to have access to a quality, affordable health care system, as well as open access to our courts.

The report notes that despite the loss of their legal rights, Texas patients have not seen the improvements they were promised.

Underserved areas remain underserved. Rural, remote, and indigent regions of Texas have seen a decrease in the rate of new doctors since Prop 12 passed.

More counties do not have an obstetrician. Today more counties in Texas do not have an obstetrician than before Proposition 12 passed.

Medical liability insurance premiums remain inflated. Despite marginal reductions, doctors are still paying dramatically higher premiums than they were just a few years before Proposition 12 passed.

Texas has the highest rate of citizens without health insurance. 25% of Texans do not have health insurance, the highest rate of uninsured among the 20 largest states.

In addition to these failures, Texas patients face an ongoing threat of medical negligence with little, if any, avenue to hold those who cause needless injury or death accountable. The report includes several profiles of individuals and families who have been devastated by medical negligence since Proposition 12’s passage.

The report illustrates how Texas misdiagnosed the health care dilemma. Instead of punishing patients and rewarding the few bad doctors who are responsible for most of the medical malpractice payments, lawmakers should pass real legal reforms that beef up patient safety standards, kick bad doctors out of the medical community, and enact comprehensive insurance reform that cracks down on insurance overcharges.

This has absolutely nothing to do with personal injury, Social Security disability, or immigration law, other than to show the ridiculous mentality of the federal government we have to do battle with every day. The Associated Press reported:

FORT WORTH - The missing clock didn't stop postal customer Al Cunningham from noticing the amount of time spent waiting for service.

"It's always long here," said Cunningham, 49, an insurance adjuster and former postal employee who was standing in line at the Watson Post Office in Fort Worth.

The Watson Post Office is one of the nation's 37,000 post offices in which clocks have been removed from retail areas as part of a "retail standardization program" launched last year.

"We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock," said Stephen Seewoester, Dallas spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service.

At the Fort Worth post office, the hook that once held up the small battery-powered clock now protrudes from a plaster wall. The clock was taken down months ago.

A customer-service expert at Texas A&M University was not impressed with the decision to take down the timepieces.

"It's silly," said Leonard Berry, holder of the M.B. Zale Chair in Retail and Marketing Leadership. "I guess they think people don't have watches."

Texas Insurance Company Complaint Forms Available

Proposition 12’s Real Impact

Clocks Go Missing From Post Offices