Asbestos Reform II: Electric Boogaloo

Today's Post article, among other stories, notes a medical criteria proposal being advanced by Durbin, among others.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate and a leading opponent of the trust fund, acknowledged that "significant changes in the existing tort system" are needed, and that all the principals -- including the trial lawyers who sought to defeat the proposed fund -- must give ground.

"We have to find a reasonable way to help those victims," Durbin said. He suggested reviving an approach, which Republicans had not advanced for years, to establish medical criteria for asbestos lawsuits within the current system. Trial lawyers opposed that approach, as did most Democrats, which is one reason the fund idea became popular.

Most stories also note, as does Point of Law, that the trust fund bill may not in fact be entirely dead.