DeSantis signs bill blocking families, patients from being able to sue health-care providers over covid-related injuries, deaths

Goldhedge · Jan 18, 2023

DeSantis signs bill blocking families, patients from being able to sue health-care providers over covid-related injuries, deaths, issues new Florida COVID-related guidance

By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor
Feb 26, 2022

(The Center Square ) – Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill this week that at least 35 organizations asked him to veto. Now health-care providers have liability protection from being sued by patients and family members over COVID-19-related injuries, deaths and refusal to try available treatment.

The new law provides liability protection to health-care providers that follow “government-issued health standards” that “include the CDC's COVID-19 guidelines, which many say aren't working,” the groups wrote in a letter to DeSantis. “Some medical professionals have stated that these CDC protocols have led to unnecessary medicines, ventilation and deaths.”

Shawn McBride, director of The American Freedom Information Institute, Inc. who led the 35-group coalition asking DeSantis to veto the bill, told The Center Square that while DeSantis “signed a bill that may allow CDC protocols to continue in some hospitals, we’ve laid the foundation to help more folks get to medical freedom.”

On the one hand, DeSantis signing the bill was a loss, but on the other hand, a win, because their voices were heard, he says. “The sad news is that - as we warned - hospitals could choose to keep using CDC and other protocols and still get liability protection,” he added, “So there is still work to do.”

On the same day DeSantis signed the bill, the Florida Department of Health issued new guidelines allowing for more treatments to be made available.

DeSantis and State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced the new guidance without mentioning the bill he signed into law.

more