A Suitable Remedy
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The White House doesn’t seem too worried about the medicines we take. Chief of Staff Andrew Card said recently that the Food and Drug Administration is doing a “spectacular” job overseeing drug safety. Really? Even though the agency reportedly didn’t act on warning signs linking blockbuster arthritis painkillers to increased risk of heart trouble and strokes? When it failed to warn doctors and parents about the risk of suicide among children taking antidepressants? Meanwhile, the president is calling for “tort reform.” As a first step, his Republican allies in Congress are working on a bill to limit the liability of pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits brought by people injured by drugs or medical devices the FDA had okayed. But the administration can’t have it both ways. Either it should move to strengthen regulatory agencies or it should maintain the present system of tort liability. Take away both, and consumers are in deep trouble. Over many years, the federal government has evolved two systems for preventing the lure of profits from compromising Americans’ health or safety. The first is an alphabet soup of federal regulatory agencies stretching from the FDA to the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and on into nooks and crannies at the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere. As anyone who has dealt with (or tried to run) one of these agencies knows, the regulatory system is far from perfect. Laws and rules are blunt instruments — if too lax, people are hurt; if too rigid, the economy suffers. Enforcement is tricky — finding companies that are in the wrong, discovering the extent of the harm, applying penalties sufficient to deter, coping with all the red tape. And then there are the subtle (and not-so-subtle) conflicts of interest — revolving doors between the regulatory personnel and the industries they’re supposed to regulate, political pressures from elected officials indebted to certain companies or industries, an endless parade of lobbyists and influence-peddlers through agency hallways. The second system for protecting consumers works through private lawsuits. Individuals who are harmed can sue companies, typically in state courts, for lost wages and medical costs, as well as physical impairments and psychological harm (”pain and suffering”) and possibly punitive damages. Sometimes plaintiffs join together in class-action suits under the aegis of trial lawyers who specialize in such cases (”ambulance chasers” if you’re a Republican, “consumer champions” if you’re a Democrat). This tort liability system is also imperfect. Lawsuits are expensive and risky for plaintiffs. Large portions of awards go to attorneys. Verdicts can be devastatingly expensive for companies that are found liable. Cases are often complex, and juries can at times be swayed more by emotion than by logic. Further complicating matters, different states often have differing standards of liability. But the tort system has at least one large virtue: It creates a powerful financial incentive for companies to ferret out potentially harmful side effects before they market their products, and to withdraw or redesign dangerous products if and when injuries occur. More : washingtonpost.com |