NEW YORK, March 2 In a letter to Congressional leaders released by The White House today President Barack Obama endorsed health courts specifically and proposed an appropriation of $50 million for additional demonstration grants including health courts. This is a major breakthrough for the creation of health courts - a concept developed by Common Good in partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health, with funding from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Health court pilot projects have been endorsed by virtually all leading health care participants including patient safety experts, consumer groups such as AARP, medical societies and other providers.
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Philip K. Howard, Chair of Common Good, and a leading proponent of health courts, said: "This is a huge breakthrough. Reliable health courts hold the key to eliminating the billions of dollars wasted each year in defensive medicine, as well as rebuilding a culture of openness needed for safe medicine. Unreliable justice has been like acid pouring over the healthcare delivery system. Special health courts should provide quicker justice to patients injured by mistakes and give physicians confidence that they will not be dragged through years of litigation when they did nothing wrong."
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Common Good (www.commongood.org) is a nonpartisan legal reform coalition dedicated to restoring common sense to America. The Chair of Common Good is Philip K. Howard, a lawyer and author of Life Without Lawyers, The Death of Common Sense, and The Collapse of the Common Good.
CONTACT: Jessie duPont - Goodman Media 212-576-2700 x223; [email protected]
SOURCE Common Good
