Obama Health Care Plan Omits Tort Reform

WASHINGTON (Feb. 22) -- President Barack Obama's detailed health care proposal unveiled today is, in the words of his advisers, an "opening bid" for the much-anticipated bipartisan summit on Thursday, but it lacks any mention of the president's most notable olive branch to the GOP: tort reform.

Throughout the past several months, Obama has repeatedly held up tort reform as an example of his willingness to consider Republican ideas that may rankle Democratic loyalists. Republicans have long pushed for limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, more colloquially known as tort reform, as a way to drive down health care costs across the system. They have accused Democrats of kowtowing to some of their biggest financial backers -- trial lawyers -- by opposing efforts to rein in costly lawsuits.

Obama specifically cited his openness to tort reform during his appearance before House Republicans last month. "From the start, I sought out and supported ideas from Republicans," he said. "I even talked about an issue that has been a holy grail for a lot of you, which was tort reform, and said that I'd be willing to work together as part of a comprehensive package to deal with it."

The president also mentioned the issue in his address to Congress on health care last September, saying he did not believe "that medical malpractice is a silver bullet, but I've talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs."

In his talk with House Republicans, Obama bemoaned that his outreach on tort reform "didn't get a lot of nibbles," and he cited projections from economists that limits on malpractice suits would save only about $5 billion a year -- a small fraction of total health care spending.

A spokesman for House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, criticized the omission of tort reform from the Obama plan and noted that Republicans have proposed tort reform based on "successful regulations" in California and Texas.

"One of the best ways to lower costs in health care is to reduce junk lawsuits that result in costly defensive medicine," the Boehner spokesman, Michael Steel, told AOL News. "Unfortunately, it seems that Washington Democrats are too beholden to their trial lawyer campaign donors and other special interests to work with Republicans on these common-sense reforms."

In a broader statement on the president's plan, Boehner himself said the proposal "has crippled the credibility of this week's summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected."

White House aides did not address tort reform in a briefing with reporters this morning. They noted that the Obama plan does contain some Republican ideas that were not in the legislation passed by Democrats in the House and Senate, including proposals to crack down on Medicare and Medicaid fraud. In a separate post listing Republican proposals that have been incorporated into Democratic legislation, the White House pointed out that Congress has approved grants to states for evaluating "promising medical liability reform ideas" - although that is not mentioned in the president's 11-page proposal.

"We are coming to this meeting with an open mind to additional ideas, and we hope the Republicans will do the same," White House economic adviser Jason Furman said.

An administration official later emphasized to AOL News that the president was looking forward to hearing more GOP ideas at the Thursday summit, "so there may be more then." Which suggests that when it comes to tort reform, Obama might not have put all of his cards on the table.