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Senator Rick Scott is currently one of the most prominent supporters of the SFC Richard Stayskal Military Medical Accountability Act of 2019. Scott has been an avid backer of the bill and intends to sign it as a co-sponsor once it arrived in the Senate. The bill allowing military personnel to sue for medical malpractice has already been passed by the House with bipartisan support.
The Act is named after a Green Beret soldier. Richard Stayskal was misdiagnosed by the military doctors. The doctors told him he had pneumonia when Stayskal actually suffered from lung cancer. By the time Stayskal got around to having the condition correctly diagnosed, it was already too late and cancer had reached an advanced stage.
The misdiagnosis of the military doctors was responsible for the delay in the diagnosis and treatment of Stayskal. However, Stayskal couldn’t sue the doctors because of a 1950 Supreme Court ruling which does not allow service members to sue for their injuries. However, this ruling was originally meant to apply to battlefield situations.
The current bill intends to change that. Once the bill is passed, it would allow service members to sue the United States government for any medical malpractice they suffer at the hands of military medical personnel. The bill stipulates that a service member can sue within three years of the misdiagnosis or injury.
Stayskal had incidentally met President Donald Trump at one of his rallies back in July. When he shared his plight, President Trump promised that he would do something about it. It was following up on this that the bill came to be. Now, Senator Scott, who is also a member of the Senates Armed Services Committee, is positive that the bill will soon be through the Senate, proving a vital point of relying on the service personnel and veterans.
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