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Your most important tool to protect patients and their physicians
Practicing medicine is a high-stakes endeavor; disease, diagnosis and treatment all present complex challenges with patients' lives literally on the line.
Unfortunately, this also creates an environment ripe for frivolous lawsuits brought by opportunistic trial lawyers. These lawsuits threaten physicians' practices, and they drive up costs on the patients physicians treat.
Thankfully, because of the work of the Michigan Doctors' Political Action Committee (MDPAC) and the Michigan State Medical Society's (MSMS) efforts to achieve meaningful tort reform, Michigan patients are better protected than in many other states.
Michigan is a tort reform leader, but it wasn’t always that way and getting there took hard work. MDPAC did a substantial amount of the heavy lifting.
Our joint effort started more than 20 years ago, when organized medicine worked to successfully pass aggressive tort reform legislation, creating a common sense and fair liability system that helped to keep more doctors in our communities while, most importantly, ensuring the needs of patients throughout the state were met. MDPAC played an enormous role in this effort, helping to elect lawmakers who understood the needs of patients and physicians, and Supreme Court justices who respected the rule of law.
The fight here is never over, though. Unscrupulous trial lawyers always manage to find loopholes to help them line their own pockets at patients' expense, and seemingly every year, new legislation is proposed to turn back the clock on tort reform here in our state. Despite these challenges, Michigan has continued to make progress. In fact, just a few short years ago, organized medicine scored a substantial victory with the successful passage of the Patients First Reform package that went a long way towards improving the climate for Michigan's practicing physicians and the millions of patients under their care.
The best way to protect patients and their physicians is to help elect pro-medicine lawmakers and strict constructionist judges who won't legislate from behind the bench. MDPAC is your most important tool to help make that happen.
Election Day is right around the corner, and MDPAC can make its voice heard by supporting candidates that put the needs of physicians and they patients they serve above those of profiteering trial lawyers. We need your help. Please consider doing your part to amplify that voice by supporting MDPAC today.