Proposition 52K0476

Projet de loi modifiant la loi du 15 mai 2007 concernant le règlement des différends dans le cadre de la loi du 15 mai 2007 relative à l'indemnisation des dommages résultant de soins de santé en ce qui concerne la date d'entrée en vigueur.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Pieter De Crem, Luc Goutry
LE Melchior Wathelet
MR Daniel Bacquelaine
Open Vld Bart Tommelein

Submission date

Nov. 29, 2007

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

liability health care profession doctor medicine medical error damage damages insurance

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA LDD MR FN VB

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

Dec. 13, 2007 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The report will be very brief, so I will tell you from my place.

These proposals of law. Goutry et consorts aim to postpone the entry into force of two laws: the law of 15 May 2007 concerning compensation for damages resulting from health care and the law of 15 May concerning the settlement of disputes under the Framework Law.

Given the current business period, the enforcement orders could not be taken. Therefore, it was proposed to postpone the entry into force of these two laws by 1 January 2009. Of course, all members of the commission stressed the need to postpone the entry into force of these laws, given the legal uncertainty.

However, during the general discussion, some members recalled that the debate was not closed and that we were waiting for the opinion of a report from the Federal Center for Health Care Expertise on the costs of the system set up by law. This report should be available in the coming days. Therefore, it will be important to continue the debate in the committee.

Proposals and technical amendments were approved by 12 votes against 3 abstentions.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, I do not want to miss the opportunity to point out what is happening now. It is actually strange. If a member of parliament can have a bill of which he is the chief speaker approved, he is usually very proud of it and usually comes to the tribune to make it clear that what he has arranged, what his commitment was in this Parliament, will benefit the people.

What I have to come here to do, as the applicant of this bill together with other people, is actually coming to say that we must forcefully postpone a law that was announced with a lot of poeha and which normally should be very important to the people. We cannot do otherwise, because such a law is not applicable. Such a law cannot enter into force. Nothing is provided, neither in implementing decisions nor in financing. There are no legally concluding interpretations. There is criticism widespread. In other words, the approved law rushes across all sides. We must urgently submit a bill here. Given the current situation and the political situation, we cannot, of course, do otherwise, so as to avoid accidents and to ensure that the law, which cannot be enforced, would nevertheless enter into force.

What is even worse is that for years we have been talking about the important principle in this law. It refers to the principle that patients who suffer damage after certain medical interventions or treatments – unforeseen or unexpected damage that could not be predicted by the doctor and about which the affected persons were not informed but which makes them feel disadvantaged – can apply for compensation for this.

Patients can do this today, and they do it, but the great difficulty is that they must attack their doctors. They must attack the doctor, prosecute him and, in addition, be able to prove themselves that a mistake has happened. As a patient, try to prove what mistake happened. Only then will they possibly have a chance, first, to completely break the relationship with the doctor and, secondly, to go through the latter because they are not mature against the defence of a doctor at such a time.

The purpose of that law, is ⁇ interesting, in particular to solidarize the complaints. Ensure that the patient does not have to attack his doctor directly, but can turn to a kind of solidarity fund that then in its place will mediate with the insurance of the doctor concerned, but which in any case exempts the patient from damages.

It should therefore ensure that the patient can obtain compensation in a simple way, without having to provide the burden of proof himself. This is actually the implementation of the law, the faultless medical responsibility. If you ask me whether we need such legislation, the answer is, of course, yes. Doctors are also afraid of doing something wrong. One is going to do unnecessary examinations, one is going to do too many examinations because the doctor wants to make himself risk-free because he can hardly pay his insurance. Insurances are becoming very expensive and we gradually end up in the American system where every patient will claim damages to his doctor in the long run. This must therefore be arranged by creating an objective point of contact, a fund that monitors whether the complaints are legitimate, accountable and correct to ensure that people can obtain compensation in an easy way.

We told the Minister that this was important and that we wanted to cooperate on it. We are of course in favour of that principle. We even requested that hearing be held on this subject in the committee. Then we could invite competent people in Parliament to see how we should draft such legislation and how much money we needed to extract for it. What happened then, ladies and gentlemen? In April, two months before the elections, it turned out that there was no time for it. Paars turned out to be biologized by the elections. Especially PS and sp.a wanted to go to the elections while they could say they had done something for the patient, the little man, who became the victim of medical damage. Thus, they could invite the population to vote for them, the social party that has ensured that it can be stepped into the fund!

We warned them that it was better not to do this because it was dangerous and because the law was cracking on all sides. We are tired of amendments. We have even drafted an amendment to at least advocate that, in a title to be preserved and for security reasons, the law would not enter into force on 1 January. We had already submitted that amendment in April. All this was wiped away, and one day this innumerably difficult matter was pushed through the throat of the members of the commissions, under pressure especially of the socialist factions. They said it wasn’t important, everything was arranged and would be fine. We didn’t have to attract it. They had to be able to say that they were the ones who invented the fund and made it available to the people.

In the meantime, the drama of course happened: the document has remained. No one in the seated majority is interested in this. This cannot be done in current matters either. We were astonished when it was established that the current titularis at the Department of Public Health, Minister Donfut, had not even any implementing decision in preparation. No funding has been planned yet. In other words, the fund simply cannot work. It cannot be implemented. So we must be forced – with hanging feet and shame – to say that we must postpone this at least until the beginning of 2009 because the system is not on its feet.

Colleagues, when I proposed in the Committee on Public Health not to waste time, to organize the hearings immediately and to immediately invite the specialists on the subject in order to be able to improve and make the legislation enforceable, I was surprised, surprised and transformed to hear Mr. Mayeur, supported by the colleagues of the sp.a, say that I, frustrated after eight years of opposition, wanted to do nothing but take revenge; he said that I wanted to organize hearings on something that had long been approved, which therefore no longer needed. Only the law had to be implemented.

I would be embarrassed to say such a thing, and I sincerely think so! In April, I told Minister Demotte, both in the committee and in this speech room, that an incredible responsibility rested on him because from then on false expectations were created for the patients and that he did not contradict them, on the contrary. I told him that he promised the people that they would be helped, while this would not be possible. Well, today it turns out to be so.

Shame on you! Shame on you, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues of purple, who have only done on announcement policy, but have never thoroughly prepared the affairs.

Therefore, we could not otherwise – fortunately we have a majority for it – than at least postpone this law which does not exist, this non-law, this non-executable law. Colleagues, I make a call to work quickly and unanimously on this matter, because of course we are in favor of a good arrangement for faultless liability.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, if we can rejoice with the quality of our health care service, if we must fight to maintain it or maintain its funding and accessibility, we must also see that patients are poor when they are confronted – which, fortunately, is rare – with a medical error. They are even more impoverished if they do not have easy access to justice, whether for financial reasons because justice continues to be very expensive – to the point of prompting some to hesitate to assert their rights – or cultural reasons because justice remains too incomprehensible for many of our fellow citizens. Therefore, it requires a large debate and a large construction of simplification.

In those cases, many people choose to remain silent and suffer in silence rather than encounter new, legal concerns this time.

All this justifies an interest in the rights of patients, which Ecolo has never ceased to do by supporting the associations that welcome and federate them, or by drafting bills to enable them to defend themselves more easily in case of error or medical accident. Similarly, such bills are seen quite positively by the practitioners themselves, for whom it is not easy to work properly in an atmosphere of suspicion, permanent questioning, or even judicial intervention in case of disagreement or problem with one or the other patient.

That is to say, how much we could rejoice in this bill introduced by Minister Demotte and voted by this assembly in April 2007, a few months before the federal elections, as some have already pointed out. And that, even though it still contained many questions and questions to be resolved through arrests. It was somehow a framework law, easier to draft and make adopted than a precise and complete law. And then, it was probably also easier and more useful to introduce a few months before the elections; it was somehow a good war.

Once the summer passed, however, it was necessary to discharge. Since the implementing orders were not drafted, including in the form of pre-projects, it was to make clear the failure of the outgoing government to fulfill its promises of implementation on 1 January 2008 of such a promising law and that of the government potentially entering to take over. The Law on the Protection of Patients Victims of Medical Errors was, like so many other records, caught up between the finishing violet and the not yet ripe blue orange. The bad administration.

What a disappointment when I questioned Minister Donfut about this on 13 November last year, and when the quality of his predecessor’s work in healthcare was so praised. No, the implementation orders were not ready, did not even exist in the form of a barrel, and could not be adopted in the period of ordinary business. Yes, it would be necessary, through the law-program, to postpone the implementation of the law. The program law will be preceded by a week by these bills submitted by some of our colleagues, including the CDH and CD&V.

Bravo for this initiative, but above all I wish you to be able to submit together, in the future, more useful bill proposals to safeguard and strengthen interpersonal solidarity.

We are quite far away, according to what I have seen from negotiations for forming a government!

For us, it does not matter the means, provided that this postponement is voted, since neither the question of the budget nor that of the criminal and civil impunity acquired by the doctors on 1 January could be settled beforehand, which was the real problem.

But now it is not a matter of throwing away the promises of this law, of destroying its useful principles and of continuing to ignore, as has been too long, the rights of patients victims of medical errors.

If we vote with the Ecolo-Groen group! This bill delaying the implementation of this arrangement by 1 January 2009 at the latest is not intended to permanently prevent it from existing due to lack of budget or necessary specifications.

Therefore, we will be especially attentive to the fact that, once this text has been voted, all the actors do not rest on their laurels and reject later the urgent and necessary action that I described earlier in favor of patients and patients, victims of error or medical accident.

In this case, it is rather – and I form the wish – to step back to jump better and to save a little time to quickly set up the most efficient and most efficient device possible, and ⁇ not to disrupt the promises contained in the law that we will postpone today, through our vote.