Columnist Sid Salter is pushing for a House bill that would require nursing homes to carry $500,000 in liability insurance.

Salter explains the reasoning for the bill and the Senate GOP’s desire to kill it in a blog post:

During the tort reform fight, nursing home operators, their lobbyists and the insurance industry begged for damage caps based primarily on the notion that it would enable them to afford liability insurance and give them a ceiling and a floor on damages. It also protected them from “jackpot justice” and irresponsible juries.

But it appears now that a number of nursing homes aren’t carrying sufficient liability insurance even to compensate vulnerable elderly victims or their families up to the $500,000 damage cap. Their strategy is to be underinsured and if the verdict is too large, take bancruptcy.

The House passed House Bill 536 with Republican support. But it’s being killed in the state Senate. Why? Because the nursing home operators, their lobbyists and the insurance industry — some of which supplies some nursing homes with so-called “eroding” policies that really screw nursing home abuse victims by taking the nursing home’s legal fees out of the available liability insurance — are leading the Senate leadership around like obedient lap dogs.

Few things are as clearly right or wrong, but this bill embodies what is right and fair. What the GOP is doing in the Senate embodies just the opposite.