Please Urge Your Legislators to Oppose Latest Wrongful Death Liability Expansion Legislation
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Despite the fact that Governor Hochul has vetoed legislation three times in the last three years that would greatly expand damages awardable in wrongful death actions and dramatically increase physicians’ already staggeringly high liability insurance premiums, near-identical legislation (S4423/A6063) has again been introduced and again is moving. The legislation has advanced to the Senate floor and is in the Assembly Judiciary Committee.
Thank you for your previous grassroots contacts urging a veto. However, with this bill again advancing, we are asking physicians to contact their legislators and the Governor to stop this one-sided legislation and urge that any legislation to update New York’s wrongful death law be balanced to also bring down our extraordinary medical liability costs.
Please take the time to send a communication to your legislators OPPOSE that this legislation is fundamentally at odds with the policy efforts of many who seek to protect and expand patient access to care. The Governor’s vetoes of substantially similar bills have importantly recognized the “significant unintended consequences” of expanding the types of damages in wrongful death actions, including the adverse impact to our community healthcare infrastructure arising from the likely huge increase in liability costs it would face through these expanded liability awards.
The latest version of this bill does not in any way change the substantive impact of this bill and its massive increase in insurance costs for our hospitals and physicians. That is because multiple actuarial studies have predicted a 40% increase in medical liability insurance costs was almost entirely based on the new category of non-economic damages the latest legislation would continue to permit to be awarded.
Moreover, with New York facing potentially enormous cuts to its Medicaid program through pending federal legislation, our healthcare system cannot sustain any further instability through liability increases that would arise through this legislation.
Please contact your legislators today OPPOSE
