Lawsuit caps are not there to be heartless. Polis keeps touting Canada drug importation. Is that a conflict with reality?
Lawsuit damage caps might seem like a bad idea if you're the one pursuing a lawsuit, but they are not there for heartless reasons.
They are there to make the economy work better for us all.
I've never had to sue anyone for money. I've never (directly) suffered the loss of a loved one due to medical malpractice. I've never been permanently injured or disabled because of someone else's actions.
I have, however, had intersection enough with the system to understand why we have lawyers and lawsuits.*
I say all this to put prologue to the idea below; understand I don't come at this from a heartless perspective.
Reasonable** lawsuit damage caps, as much as it might be painful to the plaintiffs who've suffered, are in the best interest of us all.
Emotional reactions to loss happen not just for plaintiffs, they happen for us all and this includes the juries tasked with assessing a lawsuit. The problem can be that, absent some sort of limit that acts to brake a natural human tendency to punish, the awards for damages don't just harm those at fault.
They can harm whole companies. Companies that employ parents. They can have effects that spill over into other companies in the same industry. They make insurance costly and when more money must be diverted to insurance there is less available for all the other things a business could spend on.
Damage caps give certainty. Certainty means less risk. It means lower insurance costs. They save us all money. They save jobs.
The article linked below details a recent study that puts numbers to these kinds of costs along with a ballot measure to remove damage caps.
I went to the Secretary of State's initiative tracker (linked second below) to find the ballot issue and took a screenshot in case you want to read up on it yourself and/or follow its progress.
I will keep my eyes and ears open on this one and share updates as I find them.
One last thing. Lest you thought this initiative was about truth justice and the American way, take a look at the screenshot showing some of the ballot initiative language. Our state exempts a few groups from liability altogether (ski resorts as an example). Guess who would be exempt from both lawsuits AND damage caps? Ski resorts.
*Without going into detail, the issue for me centered around an abscess that developed after a workers comp claim. I didn't want anything other than care and had to fight tooth and nail to get seen. This taught me the reason why, even though I don't like them, we have personal injury lawyers and workers comp lawyers.
**In case you're curious, one thing I view as reasonable is letting damage limits come up with inflation.
https://tsscolorado.com/study-removing-lawsuit-caps-will-cost-colorado-2-billion/
https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Initiatives/titleBoard/
What do you do when your policy goals and wishes for slick solutions conflict with reality?
About 5 years back Colorado set in motion a program to import medicines from Canada** as a cost saving measure.
Touted by the governor (see the first link below) as a "... major piece in our work to lower the cost of prescription drugs..." and as "...making lower health costs a reality for Coloradans" this importation scheme seems to have lately hit a snag.
According to the article linked second below, the program has hit a series of snags including (what I take to be) catch-22's with the FDA, and difficulties in getting drug companies to want to join the program.
Undeterred by reality, of course, our govenor touted about a month back that we are, quoting the second article, "...one step closer to launching our Drug Importation Program."
Boy, if one step in 5 years and no one returning your phone calls is a thing to crow about, well, all I can say is that I am in the wrong business. I need to be over where these folks are, where success is this loosely defined.
I will leave it to you to read up more on the details, but the cheery unreality from the governor's office, combined with the squabbles with the FDA (with Colorado's drug importation program seeming to insist that if only the Feds would approve our program then the companies would start taking their phone calls and line up to participate), make me marvel at how we as a state end up spending money on speculative programs.
Wouldn't it have perhaps been better to have not tried to do this, to have saved the salaries and the money, and just not taken from taxpayers in the first place? Or perhaps put this to better use in programs that would have had a full 5 years of impact on people?
Too late to get it back now anyway. Maybe it would be better to ditch the effort, recognize reality and that it was a flop, and stop funding it going forward.
**A common misconception is that somehow the US has messed up in "allowing" drug companies to overcharge us, and thus we have to go the extra step of importing these drugs from places like Canada (where they know how to manage things dagnabbit!) to get savings because the Feds just won't crack down. Part of the reason that we pay more in the US is that we as a nation, through higher prices, are helping to fund the research that goes into creating these new and exotic drugs. If we all acted as other countries did, the question of the high prices for new wonder drugs would be moot. There would be none to buy.
https://coloradosun.com/2022/12/06/colorado-import-prescription-drugs-canada/
https://coloradosun.com/2024/03/19/colorado-drug-importation-canada-fda/