REMARKS BY LEANNE DYESS

BEFORE

THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

“Legislative Hearing on H.R. 5, The HEALTH Act of 2003”

Tuesday, March 4, 2003 at 9:00am

2141 Rayburn

Chairman Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member Conyers, distinguished members of the House Judiciary Committee:

It’s an honor for me to sit before you this afternoon – to open up my life, and the life of my family, in an attempt to demonstrate how medical liability costs are hurting people all across America. While others may talk in terms of economics and policy today, I want to speak from the heart.

I want to share with you the life my two children and I are now forced to live because of a crisis in health care that I believe can be fixed. And when I leave and the lights turn off and the television cameras go away, I want you – and all America – to know one thing, and that is that this crisis is not about insurance. It’s not about doctors, or hospitals, or even personal injury lawyers. It’s a crisis about individuals and their access to what I believe is, otherwise, the greatest health care in the world.

Our story began on July 5^th of last year, when my husband Tony was returning from work in Gulfport, Mississippi. We had started a new business. Tony was working hard, as was I. We were doing our best to build a life for our children, and their futures were filled with promise. Everything looked bright. Then, in an instant, it changed. Tony was involved in a single car accident. They suspect he may have fallen asleep, though we’ll never know.

What we do know is that after removing him from the car, they rushed Tony to Garden Park hospital in Gulfport. He had head injuries and required immediate attention. Shortly thereafter, I received the telephone call that I pray no other wife will ever have to receive. I was informed of the accident and told that the injuries were serious. But I cannot describe to you the panic that gave way to hopelessness when they somberly said, “We don’t have the specialist necessary to take care of him. We need to airlift him to another hospital.”

I couldn’t understand this. Gulfport is one of the fastest growing and most prosperous regions of Mississippi. Garden Park is a good hospital. Where, I wondered, was the specialist – the specialist who could have taken care of my husband?

Almost six hours passed before Tony was airlifted to the University Medical Center – six hours for the damage to his brain to continue before they had a specialist capable of putting a drain into his head to relieve the pressure on his brain – six unforgettable hours that changed our life.

Today Tony is permanently brain damaged. He is mentally incompetent, unable to care for himself – unable to provide for his children – unable to live the vibrant, active and loving life he was living only moments before his accident.

I could share with you the panic of a woman suddenly forced into the role of both mother and father to her teenage children – of a woman whose life is suddenly caught in limbo, unable to move forward or backward. I could tell you about a woman who now had to worry about the constant care of her husband, who had to make concessions she thought she’d never have to make to be able to pay for his therapy and care. But to describe this would be to take us away from the most important point and the value of what I learned.

Chairman Sensenbrenner, I learned that there was no specialist on staff that night in Gulfport because rising medical liability costs had forced physicians in that community to abandon their practices. In that area, at that time, there was only one doctor who had the expertise to care for Tony and he was forced to cover multiple hospitals – stretched thin and unable to care for everyone. Another doctor quit his practice just days before Tony was admitted because his insurance company terminated all of the medical liability policies nationwide. That doctor could not obtain affordable coverage. He could not practice. And on that hot night in July, my husband and our family drew the short straw.

I have also learned that Mississippi is not unique, that this crisis rages in states all across America. It rages in Nevada, where young expectant mothers cannot find ob/gyns. It rages in Florida, where children cannot find pediatric neurosurgeons. And it rages in Pennsylvania, where the elderly who have come to depend on their orthopedic surgeons are being told that those trusted doctors are moving to states where practicing medicine is affordable and less risky.

The real danger of this crisis is that it is not readily seen. It’s insidious, like termites in the structure of a home. They get into the woodwork, but you cannot see the damage. The walls of the house remain beautiful. You don’t know what’s going on just beneath the surface. At least not for a season. Then, one day you go to hang a picture or shelf and the whole wall comes down; everything is destroyed. Before July 5^th, I was like most Americans, completely unaware that just below the surface of our nation’s health care delivery system, serious damage was being done by excessive and frivolous litigation – litigation that was forcing liability costs beyond the ability of doctors to pay. I had heard about some of the frivolous cases and, of course, the awards that climbed into the hundreds of millions of dollars. And like most Americans I shook my head and said, “Someone hit the lottery.”

But I never asked, “At what cost?” I never asked, “Who has to pay for those incredible awards?” It is a tragedy when a medical mistake results in serious injury. But when that injury – often an accident or oversight by an otherwise skilled physician – is compounded by a lottery-like award, and that award along with others make it too expensive to practice medicine, there is a cost. And believe me, it’s a terrible cost to pay.

Like most Americans, I did not know the cost. I did not know the damage. You see, Mr. Chairman, it’s not until your spouse needs a specialist, or you’re the expectant mother who needs an ob/gyn, or it’s your child who needs a pediatric neurosurgeon, that you realize the damage beneath the surface.

From my perspective, sitting here today, this problem far exceeds any other challenge facing America’s health care – even the challenge of the uninsured. My family had insurance when Tony was injured. We had good insurance. What we didn’t have was a doctor. And now, no amount of money can relieve our pain and suffering. But knowing that others may not have to go through what we’ve gone through could go a long way toward helping us heal.

Mr. Chairman, I know of your efforts to see America through this crisis. I know this is important to you, and that it’s important to the President. I know of the priority Congress is placing upon doing something… and doing it now. Today, I pledge to you my complete support. It is my prayer that no woman – or anyone else – anywhere will ever have to go through what I’ve gone through, and what I continue to go through every day with my two beautiful children and a husband I dearly love.