http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Call or Write your Senators and Representatives
and tell them to VOTE NO on  H.R. 1215!

The U.S. Congress is fighting hard to take away your rights and the power of individual states to protect those rights.

The influence of BIG BUSINESS over your elected representatives is being used protect careless and greedy companies and their insurers from the responsibility to pay for their own misconduct. They are working to transfer to taxpayers the expense of caring for the victims of corporate misconduct. And if the responsibility to pay for the harm they do disappears then a primary motive for manufacturers and drug companies to make safe products disappears with it.

Let’s Get Specific

H.R. 1215:
If your loved one ends up in a nursing home, and develops fatal bedsores because the nursing home chose to understaff to maximize profits, it won’t matter. This bill leaves victims of nursing home abuse with no practical remedy.

Is it okay with you if your hospitalized child suffers brain injury and dies because there were not enough health care professionals to provide proper supervision? Under this bill, Congress says your child does not have enough value to matter.

Congress is considering a devastating anti-justice wish list in H.R. 1215. The bill would federalize (so long states’ rights!) health care malpractice lawsuits, severely limiting victim’s access to justice.

Oppose H.R. 1215: Congress Should Protect Patients. Period. As many as 440,000 Americans die from preventable medical errors every year, making it the third leading cause of death in the U.S. behind heart disease and cancer.

XYZ drug company produces a drug that is hazardous to people taking it. Doctors are told that the drug “has problems”, but some doctors continue to prescribe it because they enjoy benefits from the drug company. You will not be permitted to sue those physicians under this law.

How Will It Cost Tax Payers?

Injured people must get care somewhere. If they cannot receive compensation from the party at fault, they will have to go elsewhere.

*Private health insurance costs can be expected to go up.
*Medicare will get hit for more payments.
*Medicaid will see increased claims.
*Social Security will see increases in disability claims.
*Healthcare costs will rise to cover the uninsured who seek treatment.
*Unemployment claims should be expected to rise as injured workers, uncompensated by the real wrongdoers, will make claims that would otherwise have been unnecessary.
*If you are somehow able to receive a jury verdict or settlement in any of the cases under this bill, the responsible party can require that any amounts over $50,000 be paid out over time; will it be one year, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years?? And what happens to your compensation if the wrongdoer goes out of business before the debt owed to you is paid?

So Why Would Congress Do This?

Because members of Congress owe big corporations and insurance companies for getting them elected. What other reason would cause Congress to pass laws they know will hurt Americans and add to an already heavy tax burden?

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