On Thursday, March 22, 2012, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5, the Protecting Access to Healthcare (PATH) Act, a bill originally introduced by Representative Phil Gingrey (R-GA), which if passed into law will cap all pain and suffering awards in medical malpractice cases at $250,000.

H.R. 5 will drastically restrict innocent victims' rights of redress in medical malpractice cases, while rewarding the health care profession with immunity for its failure to police itself. This is not only incredibly irrational from a public policy standpoint, it is also immoral because for the last ten years, an epidemic medical malpractice problem in the United States has resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, and despite this, advances in patient safety have stalled and error rates have held steady.