Posted by PWalker
President Bush is once again siding with the special interests against ordinary Americans. Previously, this administration went to bat to “protect” us against cheaper drugs being imported from Canada. Now the administration is blocking medical lawsuits by consumers who say they were injured by prescription drugs or medical devices. From the New York Times:
Allowing consumers to sue manufacturers would “undermine public health” and interfere with federal regulation of drugs and devices, by encouraging “lay judges and juries to second-guess” experts at the F.D.A., the government said in siding with the maker of a heart pump sued by the widow of a Pennsylvania man. Moreover, it said, if such lawsuits succeed, some good products may be removed from the market, depriving patients of beneficial treatments.
[…]
In the Pennsylvania ruling, issued Tuesday, the appeals court threw out a lawsuit filed by Barbara E. Horn, who said her husband had died because of defects in the design and manufacture of his heart pump. The Bush administration argued that federal law barred such claims because the device had been produced according to federal specifications. In its briefs, the administration conceded that “the views stated here differ from the views that the government advanced in 1997,” in the United States Supreme Court.
At that time, the government said that F.D.A. approval of a medical device set the minimum standard, and that states could provide “additional protection to consumers.” Now the Bush administration argues that the agency’s approval of a device “sets a ceiling as well as a floor.”
The administration said its position, holding that individual consumers have no right to sue, actually benefited consumers.
The threat of lawsuits, it said, “can harm the public health” by encouraging manufacturers to withdraw products from the market or to issue new warnings that overemphasize the risks and lead to “underutilization of beneficial treatments.”
The logic here is amazing. Applying the same reasoning to cars, for example, would mean that you could never sue a car maker as long as the car was built with seat belts and proper emissions. Even if they knowingly delivered it with defective brakes.
As with the Geneva Convention, this would likely not apply to the President. It turns out that Bush already has experience with frivolous law suits:
[President Bush] sued Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Austin, Texas, for the Sept. 8, 1998, accident, according to an article in Saturday’s New York Daily News. The April 1999 civil lawsuit was filed in Austin, the newspaper said.
Lawyers familiar with Texas insurance law told the Daily News the type of lawsuit Bush filed probably was unnecessary because his insurance policy probably would have handled the costs.