The ongoing Illinois drama over the medical malpractice-reform debate intensified
last week when President George W. Bush paid a visit to Madison County.
Yes, that Madison County — the favored courtroom home to many of the nation’s wealthiest trial lawyers, made universally infamous by the multibillion-dollar class-action lawsuits filed over asbestos and Marlboro Lights. Madison County was the focus of a multimillion-dollar state Supreme Court race last year in which both candidates accusing each other of being soft on child molesters in front of a backdrop of stories about small-town hospitals closing their doors and doctors fleeing to neighboring states. The race ended with the trial lawyers’ handpicked candidate, Democrat Gordon Maag, losing both the campaign and his appellate court seat, then immediately filing a nine-figure defamation lawsuit against Republican victor Lloyd Karmeier’s financial backers.
“Madison County” has become a shorthand epithet among an ever-widening circle of those who believe that the trial lawyers have gone too far. It was labeled the nation’s No. 1 “judicial hellhole” by the American Tort Reform Association (neighboring St. Clair County was No. 2), but even bastions of liberalism such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch have gotten into the act. The paper bellowed last fall that the county’s judicial system “stinks,” then promptly buried a poll result showing that “well over half” of Illinoisans believe that medical malpractice damages should not be capped.
The situation is so weird that some Metro East Democratic legislators openly worked with the Illinois State Medical Society on a solution last spring — which two years earlier might have resulted in their excommunication from the local party.
Even Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who campaigned as a friend of the trial lawyers and placed sole blame on the insurance industry for the med-mal insurance “crisis” during his first year in office, has at least partially changed his tune.
The governor revealed last year that his wife’s obstetrician had fled to Wisconsin to avoid outrageously high med-mal rates, then later appointed a task force to come up with a comprehensive solution.
And now, just a week before the spring session is set to begin, in walks the president.
Bush promoted his own federal tort-reform package while in Madison County and used the plight of the region’s physicians as the “tip of the spear” in his fight to persuade Congress to pass his much broader legislation.
But other than causing Illinois more embarrassment in the national media and giving the Republicans more political ammunition, will the president’s visit make much of a difference in Springfield?
There was much speculation during the veto session that the governor, who most likely covets that big pile of trial-lawyer re-election cash, would only give lukewarm support to his own commission’s recommendations and then promptly toss the hot potato at the General Assembly. This would set up yet another showdown with House Speaker Michael Madigan, a trial-lawyer friend, who would demand that the governor come out and say exactly where he stands before the House would vote on the proposal.
If that’s the scenario, a Bush visit might help force the governor’s hand. But we’re talking about a skillful evader here, not some run-of-the-mill politico.
Others believe that nothing at all will happen, with or without a high-profile presidential visit. Up until now, they note, both sides have simply used the issue as a partisan battering ram and purposely avoided coming to any agreement so that they can keep the political game alive. According to this argument, as long as the Democrats believe that they can win elections without changing the status quo too much, they won’t do much of anything. And as long as the Republicans believe they can use the issue to pick off some Democratic seats, they won’t agree to any compromises. The absence of high-minded, bipartisan legislative compromises in the past decade or two seems to support this theory.
But even some of the trial lawyers’ best legislative friends admit that something must be done, and the trial lawyers’ willingness to give on several major points during the spring session makes it appear that a reasonable solution could be found.
What’s needed, obviously, is real leadership. The governor’s commission report
will collect dust alongside all of the other blue-ribbon recommendations from
bygone years if there is no one at the top pulling all parties in a single direction.
Important, complicated, and delicate legislation such as this doesn’t magically
become law by itself.
This article appears in Jan 13-19, 2005.
