High Court Ruling Against Preemption Hurts Patients, Helps Trial Lawyers
Posted on: Thursday, 5 March 2009, 11:53 CST
The high court has decided that federal law does not preempt state law in matters of drug safety, and consequently, a flood of frivolous liability lawsuits will cause patients to lose access to critical new medicines.
"The victors in this decision claim that eliminating preemption would make drug companies more rigorous in ensuring their drugs are safe; unfortunately, it would more likely make companies invention-averse," said Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) resident scholar and health care expert Dr.
Without preemption, drug makers will be more risk averse, as they grind themselves for legal battles. The result is that patients will lose access to necessary medicines and research into new cures will decline.
"This is a win-win situation for trial lawyers, and a lose-lose for patients," said Matthews. "Lawsuits are expensive, and even the threat of baseless litigation can cause pharmaceutical firms to slow down and even stop creating and developing new products.
"Plaintiff
Without a strong preemption principle, average Americans who serve on local juries will be asked to overrule the government scientists and medical experts who oversee the drug-approval process.
"Trial lawyers know that jurors are ill-suited to evaluate the merits of drug warning labels, which is exactly why they're behind this effort. Without preemption we'll see a surge of frivolous lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies and other manufacturers." said Matthews.
The Institute for Policy Innovation is an independent, non-profit public policy organization based in
SOURCE Institute for Policy Innovation
Source: PR Newswire
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