Damnit, you pulled me back in!! hahaha.
The cost of defensive medical practice + medical insurance rates + large damage payouts to patients and lawyers by case or settlements add up to a very large amount of money. Frivelous lawsuits are not balanced by sanctions and verdicts. Most of these are settlements and are on the doctor's record permanently! Any case brought against doctors, win or loose, increases malpractice rates. Defend that, sir!
I was listening to an expert on a left leaning radio show earlier this week (in another post). He said pure tort reform is not effective and would not decrease the cost of medicine much alone. He quoted defensive medical practice costs to be at least 100 billion dollars/year. Studies have estimated this cost up to 200 billion but he used a conservative estimate. So, adding the above to defensive medicine costs would be even more...thats significant.
Addressing the whole malpractice situation (a multi-facited issue, not just tort reform) would save money and is necessary...but will not fix our healthcare crisis. Its one of many things that need to be addressed. If anyone tells you tort reform alone will fix the problem, they are wrong.
I already wished you a good day sir!
The Harvard researchers took a huge sample of 31,000 medical records, dating from the mid-1980s, and had them evaluated by practicing doctors and nurses, the professionals most likely to be sympathetic to the demands of the doctor's office and operating room. The records went through multiple rounds of evaluation, and a finding of negligence was made only if two doctors, working independently, separately reached that conclusion. Even with this conservative methodology, the study found that doctors were injuring one out of every 25 patients—and that only 4 percent of these injured patients sued.
http://www.slate.com/id/2145400/How many of those malpractice cases that were settled were b/c some drunk or high doctor killed his patient? I think the study does address the settlement number.
The median cost of medical malpractice cases is $139,000. The number of million dollar awards is less than one half of one percent of all annual awards.
44,000 to 98,000 people die from medical malpractice each year. I think we need a system to address that. We do-malpractice suits in a court of law.
Here's a pretty good compendium on the issue of medical malpractice.
http://www.citizen.org/documents/NPDB%20Report_Final.pdfDefensive medicine? You speak as if towing the line of competency is something bad. What do you mean?
