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Authors, sign in!Over coffee this morning, I was reading the September 28th issue of Business Week. An article entitled, "A Second Opinion on Malpractice," (unavailable online as of this writing) discussed numerous studies that all suggest "tort reform," as the right wing corporatists call it, would "barely make a dent in the total" health care bill of the U.S. They even cite a 2004 Congressional Budget Office study that estimated that malpractice premiums and patient awards make up less than 2% of overall health care spending. The CBO report makes a searing point about tort reform: "So-called defensive medicine may be motivated less by liability concerns than by the income it generates from physicians."
The article mentions that the state of Texas has enacted the most extensive malpractice reforms in the country. Even though the number of lawsuits and the premiums for malpractice insurance are both way down, the article said that costs of health care in Texas are still among the highest in the U.S. and are growing at a rate faster than in many other states.
So much for tort reform and its supposed savings for the health care system. While we've always known that "tort reform" is nothing more than a ruse to protect corporations from law suits, the article is serious ammunition for us in the effort to enact health care reform.
Published September 22, 2009 by Will Corsair |
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| Tags:
Health Care Reform
Public Policy
Tort Reform
Comments (1)
Nora did a review on a book about malpractice and the true facts - check it out:
The Medical Malpractice Myth, by Tom Baker
Good book!
Posted by Pamela Jean
|
September 22, 2009 10:29 AM
Posted on September 22, 2009 10:29