Every time we walk into a clinic or hospital, an invisible tax is added to our bill. It has nothing to do with the quality of our medicine, the skill of our surgeon, or the comfort of our room. Instead, it is the direct cost of a broken legal system. The U.S. medical malpractice framework was built to help injured patients and support grieving families. Instead, it has turned into a hyperadversarial gauntlet that fails everyday families while enriching trial lawyers.

Let us be completely clear: Real medical mistakes do happen. When they do, families have an absolute right to get honest answers, full transparency, and fair payments. No sensible reformer wants to protect bad actors or take away patient rights. The tragedy of our system is that it actually hurts the very victims it was built to protect. Because of massive lawyer fees and years of grueling courtroom fights, only a tiny fraction of patients who suffer genuine harm ever get timely financial help.

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For all of us, this is a direct threat to our wallets and our neighborhood care. When local physicians are forced to order unnecessary medical tests and redundant procedures just to build a legal shield against frivolous lawsuits, we all pay the price. This practice of “defensive medicine” drains up to $162 billion from the U.S. healthcare system every year. That cash is pulled directly out of our insurance premiums, our businesses, and our tax dollars.

Worse, this constant fear of lawsuits is driving highly skilled physicians out of practice entirely or forcing them to leave high-risk areas. When our communities lose their OB-GYNs, their brain surgeons, or their dedicated family physicians because malpractice insurance premiums become unaffordable, ordinary families are left stranded. We are trading away our........

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