The Virginia Courts of Justice Committee advanced SB 536, a sweeping medical malpractice reform bill, by an 18-to-4 vote after adopting a committee substitute that raises the malpractice cap to $6 million, extends the statute of limitations, adds a prejudgment interest recovery mechanism, and requires nursing homes to carry $3 million in professional liability coverage — over the objections of the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, and others who warned of a 60% increase in loss costs and potential carrier withdrawals.
Les Bowers argued 'the notion that people will stop writing policies in Virginia is just frankly wrong' and that in other states with higher caps 'they simply have reinsurance.' Rob Shin of the Doctors Company directly contradicted this, stating 'reinsurance is not a possibility' and that excess and surplus coverage would be 'extremely expensive, probably prohibitively expensive for many physicians.' Scott Johnson also warned that two major carriers said they may not write coverage in the required amount.
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“The cap came in in 1976 at $750,000. Today's money, that's over $8 million. That certainly is a better number and the VTLA likes that a whole lot more. But in the spirit of compromise, we've agreed to the 6 million. It's time to change the cap, and this is a mechanism to do it.”
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Sign in to subscribeMembers, please cast your attendance. Take roll. All members have voted. Okay. We do have a quorum. Okay with that, we have one bill on the docket, Senate Bill 536. I'm going to turn it over to Chair Simon for his civil subcommittee report. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you may recall, this bill went by for the day last time we had a meeting, and since then we've come back. This is Senate Bill 536, which had to do with medical malpractice actions and limitations on recovery and prejudgment interest. Since our last meeting, the committee has come up with a substitute. We had some amendments in the subcommittee, but I don't think we're going to use those. I think instead there's a committee sub substitute we'd like to present. Council, could you present the committee substitute? Yes, Mr. Chair. The substitute is in front of you all and it's also posted online. So it does several things. The first is that it provides for actions for malpractice occurring on or after July 1, 2027. The medical malpractice cap is established at $6 million and provides that each subsequent two year interval afterwards the cap shall be adjusted by…
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