Amendment 3.

Amendment 3 limiting attorneys' fees in medical malpractice cases was sold to Floridians as a cure to the state's so-called malpractice crisis. By reducing attorneys' fees, more money would be put into the hands of victims of medical malpractice instead of the greedy lawyers. There would be no more frivolous lawsuits and those really injured get more money. Doctors would stop leaving the state in droves. Sounds good, right? Consider these facts:

* The U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report in 2003--Medical Malpractice: Implications of Rising Premiums on Access to Health Care--that examined this issue in nine states. The GAO concluded that there is no exodus of physicians from Florida. The number of new medical licenses issued in Florida increased from 3,239 in 2000 to 3,577 in 2001, while the numbers of physicians per person has remained stable.

* The same GAO report also concluded that jury awards of any size were rare, and big jury awards (greater than $1 million) were rarer still. The GAO concluded that the rising costs of malpractice premiums were the result of insurance companies' investment losses as well as extremely competitive pricing for insurance premiums in the 1990's.

* There is no such thing as a frivolous medical malpractice case. Florida Statutes require that before a health care provider can even be put on notice of a potential claim by a lawyer, an opinion must be obtained by a physician in the same specialty area that malpractice has occurred.

This opinion routinely costs thousands of dollars that the lawyer must pay before any claim is filed. Lawyers are business people like anyone else; they do not invest in cases that do not have merit.

* Lowering attorneys' fees in medical malpractice cases will deny injured people access to the courts. Amendment 3 limits the amount of money a victim of medical malpractice may spend on his/her attorney but places no such limitation on how much can be spent on the defense of a malpractice case.

* There is no malpractice crisis. GE Medical Protective, the nation's largest medical malpractice insurer, admitted in filings with the Texas Department of Insurance that caps would not result in lower premiums.

* Medical malpractice payouts are less than 1 percent of total U.S. Health Care costs. All losses (verdicts, settlements, legal fees, etc.,) have stayed under 1 percent for the last 18 years, according to Americans for Insurance Reform.

The bottom line is Amendment 3 will not...