The U.S. House of Representatives passed the medical malpractice bill, limiting non-economic damages, as reported here. The Republicans face another filibuster in the Senate, as the New York Times reports here (registration required), but it is not entirely clear that even all the Senate Republicans support the measure.

It is also a curiosity whether a federal medical malpractice statute is constitutional as an exercise of the power to regulate interstate commerce. If violence against women does not affect interstate commerce, as the Supreme Court held here in a case arising in Southwest Virginia, then violence against medical patients might be thought of as similarly intrastate in character.