Dear Chairman Brady:
We, as the leadership of the Health Coalition on Liability and Access (HCLA), would like to congratulate
you on being named to the Health Care Reform Task Force, and commend you for your willingness to
take on the difficult task which lies before you.
As you may be aware, the HCLA is a national advocacy coalition of associations and businesses
representing a broad array of health care professionals and facilities, health care liability insurers,
employers, and health care consumers. We are dedicated to reforming our medical liability system to
increase patient safety, ensure that injured patients are compensated quickly and fairly, improve providerpatient communications, and foster an environment for affordable and accessible medical liability
insurance.
In your role on the Task Force, we request that you include comprehensive, time-tested medical liability
reforms in any proposal to address our nation’s ongoing need for an improved health care payment and
delivery system. Such reforms will improve access to care, enhance the patient-provider relationship, and
provide billions in savings to the American taxpayer.
It has been many years since Congress has addressed comprehensive medical liability reforms and, as
such, many of your colleagues may not be familiar with the positive effect such reforms can have on the
health care system. In addition, while proven reforms must remain as the base of any medical liability
proposal, changes to the medical liability environment over the last decade necessitate that adjustments be
made to legislation which Congress has considered in the past. In this regard, we would like to request a
meeting to discuss this issue with you and your staff so that we may provide you with the latest
information on this issue and suggest strategies for addressing medical liability reform going forward.
Thank you in advance for your consideration of our request. We look forward to working with you to
improve our nation’s health care system.
…
Read full letter here
