Tort Reform: The Most Needed Feature of a New Health Care Bill

One of the largest expenses patients pay when they go to a doctor is the added on fee to pay the doctor’s malpractice insurance. The direct costs of medical malpractice insurance is $30 billion yearly; and that does not include the $240 billion yearly that doctors and hospitals spend ordering useless laboratory tests “just to rule out” highly unlikely possible diagnoses so they will be free of litigation liability. This wasteful type of practice takes place to a very large extent in emergency rooms where the doctor is unlikely to ever see the patient again. So…rather than planning to see the patient, again, to check on how the problem is resolving or progressing, as a primary care physician can, he just orders more and more lab tests.
For an example of how much malpractice insurance money is passed on to the patient, consider this: It is estimated that for every baby delivered by an obstetrician, the patient is charged $1000 to pay for the doctor’s malpractice insurance.
Buried in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 1,990-page bill is a provision that provides "incentive payments" to each state that develops an "alternative medical liability law" that encourages "fair resolution" of disputes and "maintains access to affordable liability insurance." Sounds encouraging. Read on, however, and you come to this nugget: The state only qualifies if its new law "does not limit attorneys' fees or impose caps on damages."
Believe me, those “alternative medical liability laws” will only work if caps are imposed on attorneys’ fees.
To read more about the traps that exist in the new health care reform laws, I refer you to http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574441193211542788.html.