MR. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, we are going to be back here this week and try to convince the American people that we are trying to help them with their health care costs by passing yet again a medical malpractice insurance relief act.
The really sad thing about this is it does not help the cost of health care in this country. It does improve the bottom line considerably for the insurance companies. But the most egregious parts of this is the way it protects the irresponsible drug companies. We are going to provide tort protection. We are going to provide protection from lawsuits to Merck who knowingly put a product on the market that caused 139,000 Americans to have hearts attacks unnecessarily. And they knew it would do that when they put it on the market.
We are going to provide protection to an industry that cares nothing about the health of the people. It cares nothing about anything but making a few million more dollars.
I urge this House to defeat that measure.
