{"id":310426,"date":"2026-10-20T09:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T09:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/310426\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T09:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T09:18:08","slug":"pennsylvania-bill-would-rewrite-med-mal-interest-rule-standing-since-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/310426\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania bill would rewrite med-mal interest rule standing since 2002"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n One word has carried Pennsylvania\u2019s med-mal interest rule since 2002. A new bill adds two more\n <\/p>\n

\"Pennsylvania<\/p>\n

What happened: A Pennsylvania bill would expand the Mcare Act\u2019s blanket \u201cinterest\u201d rule into three distinct categories for periodic med-mal payments\u00a0<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s involved: Pennsylvania House legislators; medical professional liability insurers and defense counsel\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s at stake: Whether prejudgment interest, postjudgment interest and delay damages each accrue separately on periodic payments\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why it matters: The current one-word rule leaves open which types of interest it actually covers\u00a0<\/p>\n

Where it stands: Introduced October 6, 2026; referred to House Judiciary Committee\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

For over two decades, one word has done the heavy lifting in a key section of Pennsylvania\u2019s medical malpractice law. That word is \u201cinterest.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

House Bill 2842<\/a>, introduced on October 6 by Representatives E. Nelson, Rowe, Verobish and Wallen, would swap it out for three. The bill would amend Section 509(b)(4) of the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error Act – the Mcare Act – replacing the blanket term \u201cinterest\u201d with \u201cprejudgment interest, postjudgment interest and delay damages.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The section governs periodic payments of future damages in med-mal cases. Under the current language, interest does not accrue on a periodic payment before it comes due. The bill would make explicit that the same rule applies separately to prejudgment interest, postjudgment interest and delay damages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That distinction matters. The existing statute leaves open whether \u201cinterest\u201d covers all three categories or only some. When a large med-mal verdict is structured as periodic payments, the answer determines how much the final payout grows between verdict and payment date.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nothing else in the section would change. If a payment is late, the legal rate of interest still kicks in from the due date.\u00a0<\/p>\n

HB 2842 was referred to the House Judiciary Committee on October 7. It has not had a hearing and has not advanced beyond committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If enacted, the amendment would take effect 60 days after signing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Med-mal insurers pricing periodic-payment exposure in Pennsylvania will want to track whether this bill moves – the difference between one interest category and three is the kind of detail that reshapes reserve calculations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bill has been introduced and referred to committee. It has not been enacted, and its provisions are not yet law.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One word has carried Pennsylvania\u2019s med-mal interest rule since 2002. A new bill adds two more What happened:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[127059,127058,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-310426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-interest-rule","tag-med-mal","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}