Liability Expansion Legislation Again Introduced in NYS Legislature
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Despite Governor Hochul’s three incredibly important vetoes of legislation that would have further narrowed patients’ access to care through a dramatic increase in liability costs for physicians and hospitals, near-identical legislation (S4423/A6063) to expand damages in wrongful death actions has again been introduced.
We thank physicians for their previous grassroots contacts urging a veto and opposition to this bill. However, with this bill again having advanced to the Senate floor, we are asking physicians to again contact their legislators Preserve Patient Access to Healthcare to stop this one-sided legislation and urge that any legislation to update New York’s wrongful death law be balanced to also protect our healthcare safety net by enacting measures to reduce extraordinary medical liability costs faced by New York’s physicians and hospitals.
We need liability cost decreases, not increases. At this year’s MSSNY House of Delegates meeting, a resolution was passed calling for Governor Hochul to establish a commission to make recommendations on how best to reduce New York’s exorbitant liability costs. Please remind your legislators that wrongful death expansion legislation is fundamentally at odds with the policy efforts of many who seek to protect and expand patient access to care.
