Texas Watch—Consumer Protection. Corporate Accountability. Citizen Advocacy.

For my entire adult life, I have fought for the right of Americans to have safe, affordable and accessible health care. Our new health care law puts us squarely on the path to realizing those goals.

The law extends coverage to 32 million Americans, ends discrimination against people with pre-existing

conditions and the cruel practice of rescission, and prohibits annual and lifetime caps on care. It strengthens and enhances the Medicare program for our seniors, gives important tax credits to small businesses providing coverage to their employees, allows parents to extend coverage to their kids up to age 26 and much, much more. The Congressional Budget Office tells us that the health care law will accomplish all of this while reducing the deficit by $138 billion in the first 10 years and by $1.2 trillion in the following 10 years.

But there are still a number of elements of health insurance reform that we have yet to resolve. One of those is the issue of medical malpractice.

Throughout the debate over reform, opponents of the bill often argued that medical malpractice reform was the panacea for our national health care crisis. While doctors are understandably concerned about the high cost of medical malpractice insurance, limiting patients’ ability to seek compensation for injury is not the answer. This is why I support the repeal of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which would remove the antitrust exemption currently given to health insurance companies and, in turn, strengthen doctors’ ability to reduce insurance costs.

A repeal of the act would be preferable to restricting patients’ rights, an approach that is misguided for several reasons.

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