Insurance and medical interests spent millions in 2003 successfully urging voters to pass Proposition 12, a constitutional amendment that limits the amount of money patients or their survivors could recover in medical malpractice lawsuits. Proponents claimed that greedy lawyers were besieging doctors with frivolous lawsuits that were causing malpractice insurance rates to skyrocket and doctors to flee the state. The campaign's promise, that tort reform would bring doctors to sparsely populated regions, has now been tested for four years. It hasn't turned out that way. Also, a Superfund guide to the Houston area, the "Wart Against Christmas," and the regular book review section, in the most recent edition of The Texas Observer. Read »
Environmental Regulation »
