The Health Care Problem

What Happened to Civil Defense?

"Some time during the first Bush administration, America completely scrapped any vestige of its fledgling civil defense structure. It had eroded badly during President Carter's administration, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) took over as the lead agency for civil defense.

Introduction

Capping non-economic damage awards in medical malpractice cases is often proposed as a means to limit the burden of litigation and stem rising health care costs.(1,2) Such caps figure prominently in the current discussion of the so-called Patients' Bill of Rights.(3) Statutory limits on damage awards, however, present a few problems.

Dear Editors,