Mr. John Cahalan:

In fairness to the committee, it has thrashed through the matter in great detail and has made many recommendations. I hope the committee can stay the course and drive the reforms through in a meaningful way. We need to benchmark awards; we are simply paying too much. We need an objective way to assess what an injury is and means. Once we are paying that much, it is a fundamental problem. The second key driver is the system we go through and how long it takes — three, four, five, or six years in litigation where people can profit from the procrastination.