Leadership Quote by Joe Baca

Baca’s line is less a diagnosis than a preemptive strike in a perennial Washington knife fight: when health costs spike, someone will try to pin it on lawyers and “frivolous lawsuits.” He refuses that scapegoat up front, and he does it with a little rhetorical judo. By calling patients “consumers,” he borrows market language that usually fuels demands for tighter liability rules; then he flips it, implying that real consumer protection means looking past tort reform theater.

The intent is political triage. In the malpractice debate, “defensive medicine” is the convenient villain because it’s intuitive, emotionally sticky, and easy to message. Baca’s move is to drain that narrative of oxygen and redirect blame toward the less telegenic drivers of cost: pricing power in hospitals and pharma, administrative bloat, opaque billing, fragmented insurance incentives. He doesn’t list them, but the omission is part of the strategy: keep the frame broad enough to hold a coalition without picking a single enemy that could splinter it.

Subtext: don’t let outrage about bills get weaponized against patient rights. Malpractice isn’t just a cost center; it’s also one of the few accountability mechanisms patients have in a system that often hides errors behind bureaucracy and nondisclosure. By separating “alarmed consumers” from “malpractice as cause,” Baca signals solidarity with voters’ anxiety while quietly defending trial-lawyer-aligned policy and a governance instinct: cost containment should target structural pricing and incentives, not legal recourse.