The President supports curbing lawsuit abuse with needed medical liability reform by:

• Securing the ability of injured patients to get quick, unlimited compensation for their "economic losses," including the loss of ability to provide unpaid services like care for children or parents.
• Ensuring recoveries for non-economic damages do not exceed a reasonable amount ($250,000).
• Reserving punitive damages for egregious cases where they are justified, and limiting damages to reasonable amounts.
• Providing for payments of judgments over time rather than in a single lump sum, to ensure that appropriate payments are made when patients need them.
• Ensuring that old cases cannot be brought to court years after an event; and
• Providing that defendants pay judgments in proportion to their fault.

The President's agenda also includes providing victims of asbestos-related diseases a fair system and a long-term solution. The current system may leave little or no funds to pay current and future asbestos victims, is costly to administer (future transaction costs are estimated at between $145 and $210 billion), will impose large, indirect costs on the economy, and has driven exposed defendants, including small businesses, into bankruptcy. The President has stressed the need for reform and commended Congress for aggressively working on this problem, but more work needs to be done to pass legislation for the President to sign that provides a fair and permanent solution.