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2018 Trump Healthcare Budget Proposal Missing Tort Reform

By Jack H. FarnbauchJune 28, 2017

Many assumed that when Trump took office, tort reform measures would be a focal point of his healthcare and budget plans. The controversial H.R. 1215, a Trump sponsored budget bill stripped away many citizen’s right to the courts and mirrored many states’ tort reform bills. However, tort reform measures have not been mentioned by Trump or any of his affiliates. 

President Trump’s 2018 health care budget proposal is loaded with all kinds of campaign talking points: repealing Obamacare, slashing Medicaid, severely cutting federal programs (like Children’s Health Insurance). But it also includes things that were never mentioned a single time during the election campaign, like stripping away the rights of patients severely injured by medical malpractice, or capping compensation to catastrophically-injured children.

Likewise, the American Medical Association, the most powerful lobbyist group in favor of restricting the rights of medical malpractice victims barely mentions “medical liability” in its list of priorities for Congress. This, along with Trump’s silence on tort reform, is a positive sign that  politicians and lobbyists are seeing medical malpractice for what it is: a major problem that can and does cause a lifetime of medical expenses and disability.