Measure is on life support

DENVER - The sponsor of a bill to change medical malpractice law says recent amendments to the legislation answer complaints of the bill's opponents.

Still, the bill's fate is questionable after its House sponsor postponed a vote Wednesday night to try to save it.

Doctors have fiercely opposed SB164 on the grounds that it would cause insurance rates to skyrocket, force doctors out of specialties with high mortality rates and drive them out of rural areas where there aren't enough patients to cover costs. The bill's House sponsor is Rep. Terrence Carroll, D-Denver.

The bill that passed the Senate in March would change the way medical malpractice awards are priced by removing patients' physical impairment and disfigurement from the category of noneconomic damages. That means those things would no longer be subject to a $300,000 cap, although a $1 million limit on total damages, which a judge can waive, would remain.

Carroll has offered to amend SB164 so it would only raise the amount malpractice victims could receive for physical impairment or disfigurement to $468,010. That would be the first increase in nearly two decades.

The amendments came after two Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said they would not support the original bill. Their votes, combined with those of the Republicans on the committee, would have killed the legislation.

Lobbyists for the Colorado Medical Society, which represents doctors, said they thought the bill would be defeated Wednesday. But Carroll, the committee chairman, pulled it from the schedule. He plans to further tweak the bill to try to pick up the votes needed for the measure to pass.

Medical society officials knew about Carroll's changes, said its president, Dr. David Downs. He said the changes were close to changes they asked Senate President Peter Groff, D-Denver, to make when he had the bill in his chamber. But after weeks of haggling and several contentious committee hearings, the society's position has hardened.

"We went back to our constituents, and they thought it was time to move on," Downs said.

A number of doctors had agreed during testimony that the current cap should be raised to keep up with inflation.

"I just think that it's a disingenuous place to be at this point to say ‘we think it's reasonable but we still want to kill it,'" Carroll said.

Doctors have complaints of their own.

"The way the bill came in was a little bit of a blindside," Downs said. Carroll said doctors were involved in discussions months before the bill was written.

Both sides said the current fight is unlikely to prevent them from agreeing on other issues. That may be important as Democrats try to build a coalition to support health care reform.