Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's "Health Care Week" got off to an anemic start Monday when Democrats blocked Republicans' latest attempt to help insurance companies by limiting the damages that could be claimed by victims of medical malpractice.

Frist brought motions to invoke cloture on S.22, a bill to limit damage awards on all malpractice suits and S. 23, which would have capped awards specifically on obstetrics and gynecology cases. The motion to allow S.22 to proceed to full Senate debate garnered only 48 'Yea' votes - 60 are required for passage -- while the motion to move S. 23 forward received the nod from only 49 Senators.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) opened the day by saying that the two bills were nothing more than rehashing a failed past with such legislation and that the GOP leadership was wasting time while avoiding much more important issues.

"To think with American consumers paying over 3 dollars for gas, with college tuition moving beyond the reach of many in the middle-class, with the Iraq war dead approaching 2,500, with immigration a security crisis unresolved, with our country’s deficit standing at 9 trillion dollars, with 46 million Americans lacking health care coverage, we are moving to bills that are unnecessary and go nowhere," said Reid. "It is wrong."

The failure to achieve cloture on both bills is a major slap in the face for Frist, who claimed on Friday that GOP-sponsored initiatives on medical liability reform would dominate the week.

"These two bills are put here as a result of the insurance industry," said Reid. "These measures before the Senate don't represent a serious attempt to improve health care or the civil justice system in our country."

Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas expressed the dismay I'm sure every friend of the insurance industry felt on the Senate floor.

"Year after year after year we have tried to reform medical malpractice in this country, and the Senate has been the stumbling block," said Hutchinson.

"As insurance rates, like gas prices, continue to soar to the benefit of corporate profits, as the number of uninsured continues to rise during this presidency, the Republican-controlled Senate seeks to take up partisan legislation that will help a few very powerful insurance companies become even more powerful," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) pointed out that 20 states have some form of cap on medical liability cases and none have actually seen a decrease in premiums. Limits on damages, said Kennedy, "…are not only unfair to the victims of malpractice, they do not result in the reduction of malpractice premiums. The Bush administration and congressional Republicans are again advocating a policy which will benefit neither doctors nor patients."

Let's hope Frist dominates the floor tomorrow the way he did today.