Mr. Speaker, the Republicans have demonstrated that they either do not have a plan to fix the problem of the uninsured, or they simply do not care. Instead, they drag out the same tired giveaways to insurance companies year after year while trampling on the rights of consumers and patients.

This bill is a perfect example. It does nothing to address the real causes of rising malpractice rates, but instead protects insurance companies from their own poor business practices. It protects the pharmaceutical companies. It protects the manufacturers of medical devices. It protects everyone except the victims of medical malpractice.

We are told the bill is necessary to drive down insurance rates because juries are awarding too much money to plaintiffs. But the fact is lawsuits account for less than 2 percent of health care costs, as they always have, according to CBO. The average jury award has hardly increased at all in the last decade. In the last year, claims payments have decreased, gone down, by 9 percent, according to HHS, yet insurance premiums continue to rise.

So where is the crisis? Not in huge runaway juries and not in exorbitant awards. Yet we have here a spectacular assault on the rights of consumers and patients. A cap on noneconomic damages of $250,000 might have been reasonable in 1975 when it was first imposed in California, but today, and with increasing inflation, it is worth less and less.

When we considered this bill in committee last year, I offered amendments to raise the cap to $1.5 million, or at least to index it to inflation so it does not get inflated down to worthlessness. Party line vote: Cannot do that.

But the biggest weakness of this bill is that it will not work. Anyone who thinks insurance rates will go down as a result of this bill is being sold a bill of goods. This bill merely hopes the insurance executives will, out of the goodness of their hearts, reduce the rates they charge doctors. But there is no mechanism to guarantee this. Instead, the bill will simply lead to higher bottom lines for the insurance companies and protect the careless insurance companies and the careless manufacturers.

Every attempt by Democrats to mandate that savings be passed along to doctors in the form of lower rates was voted down by the Republicans. Mr. Speaker, we should not be misled by this bill's supporters. Do not believe for a second that insurance rates will go down as a result of this bill. This bill should be seen for what it is: a gift from the Republican majority to the big insurance companies at the cost of patients' rights, and deluding the doctors and the health care practitioners who are being led down the garden path.

If it were meant to help them, why do the Republicans refuse to put into this bill a provision that mandates that the savings that this bill will supposedly accomplish, at least some of those savings, are passed along to doctors in the form of lower malpractice rates? It will not happen.

The true thing we should do is to crack down on the 1 or 2 percent of doctors who cause 90 percent of the insurance claims who should not be practicing medicine, and better regulate the insurance companies. That is what we should do to solve this problem. Instead, we have this feel-good bill that will injure already injured patients and will do nothing for the doctors.