On November 16, I posted here about the opposition to federal tort reform by Judson Phillips, the founder of the influential Tea Party Nation group, who defended the 7th Amendment right to a civil jury trial. Mr. Phillips repeated his defense of the 7th Amendment, as well as the 10th Amendment, in a new letter to the Speaker and Majority Leader of the House. He advised the House leaders to avoid adding limits on awards in health care and medmal lawsuits to any bill preventing cuts in Medicare payments to doctors (the ''doc fix'' bill). Mr. Phillips generously agreed to allow me to post the entire text of the letter below. I urge 7th and 10th Amendment advocates to send this letter to the local Congressman and Senator.
The Honorable John Boehner
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Eric Cantor
Majority Leader
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor,
The Doc Fix bill, to prevent cuts in Medicare payments to doctors, will soon make its way through the Congress. One of the things that some medical groups, such as the American Medical Association, want to include in it is federal tort reform.
I strongly urge you, on behalf of myself and many others in the Tea Party movement, to keep that provision out of the Doc Fix bill.
The Tea Party strongly supports the Constitution and the Constitution is very clear on this. Not only does the Tenth Amendment reserve these kind of issues for the States, the Seventh Amendment protects the rights of Americans to a civil jury trial. The right to a jury trial was so important to our founding fathers, it was included in the Bill of Rights, not once, but twice.
I wrote about this on my blog on the Tea Party Nation website a few days ago. I said:
"The civil jury system is a part of the free market. Our founding fathers thought enough of it to make it the 7th Amendment to the Constitution. Jury awards are a part of the free market. They do not exist in a vacuum. They not only compensate someone for an injury but like so many other parts of the free market, they act to deter bad behavior. If I am injured by a bad doctor or suffer some other type of injury or loss, I do not want the Federal Government telling me what my pain is worth. I want twelve citizens deciding justice for me. The right to a jury trial has a long and storied history in America and even further back in Britain."
Our founding fathers understood how well the free market worked. The free market is a fundamental part of liberty and freedom. To encroach on them through "tort reform" is an abuse of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution and clearly runs afoul of both the 7th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.
"Tort reform" is simply a gift to a special interest group. The American Medical Association, which has been pushing tort reform, is not interested in the Constitution. They want to protect doctors. Of course, the AMA also supported Obamacare, which should tell us almost everything we need to know right there.
Health care in America is expensive, not because of Americans exercising their constitutional right to seek redress for injuries in court, but due to the destruction of the free market in the health care sector of the economy.
The AMA and the insurance companies have destroyed the free market. There is no competition among doctors. Without that competition, there is no market efficiency created. Just as you have in any other sector where there is no competition, prices are inflated and there is no pressure to bring them down. So after destroying the free market in health care, now they want us to listen to them on an issue that will have the net effect of stripping Americans of one of the constitutional rights our founding fathers thought were important enough to include in the Bill of Rights.
Americans are looking to the Republicans in Congress for leadership, not for capitulation to special interests.
Federal tort reform is a bad idea and it should not be included in the Doc Fix bill. It is unconstitutional and it is a bad idea. As with so many bad ideas brought up by liberal groups, it will not achieve its goal.
Sincerely,
Judson Phillips,
Founder, Tea Party Nation
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