Why would "tort reform" lower health care costs?

[patwin87]

Yes, it would lower malpractice insurance costs for individual doctors, but that doesn't mean it would lower health care costs for all of society. If bad doctors face less consequences for medical mistakes, there would be more medical mistakes. And medical mistakes are extremely expensive to correct or treat. It is much cheaper to have a few lawsuits by comparison and get that bad doctor out of medicine so he can go and get his real estate license.

Medical boards don't usually take action unless there is malpractice litigation going on and many lawyers wont take cases if there is such a small cap on damages. So, the bad doctor would continue being a doctor and making medical mistakes which would in turn cost all of us a boatload of money.

Besides that, tort laws are fair. If I take my car to a mechanic and he forgets to screw in the log nuts, he has to pay for fixing my car. If I take my body to a doctor and he messes it up, shouldn't he have to be the one to pay to fix it?

[bedyw25]

Trial lawyers have pushed up health care costs tremendously. It's certainly true that doctors are ordering unnecessary and redundant tests. This pushes up health care costs for everyone.

But even worse than higher health care costs, the current litigious situation in our country has pushed good doctors out the door and served to keep other doctors from entering the field. In return, this has reduced the supply of competent, trained medical professionals. It's pushed thousands of doctors into early retirement or into other fields.

Malpractice certainly exists and doctors should be held responsible, but I don't want trial lawyers overseeing our medical system. How many lawyers have become ultra-rich by taking on our medical system? In my opinion, they badly need to be reined in. That's why I support tort reform.

[joachim]

Doctors order tests they know are unnecessary (cat scans, MRIs, these are expensive tests) to cover their butt.

Millions of unnecessary $1000 tests each year, well do the math:

10^6*10^3 = 10^9 = $1,000,000,000 (ALMOST ALL OF IT IS WASTE) but necessary for a doctor who doesn't want an ambulance chaser ruining his career, his practice, and the people he employs depending on his business.

[joachim]

By enacting torte reform their would be fewer frivolous lawsuits and fewer unreasonable settlements. Allowing multimillion dollar settlements only encourages ambulance chasers and frauds. It does not punish the doctor because their insurance pays it.

If we were to actively prosecute bad doctors and enact torte reform, good doctors wouldn't have as high of premiums and would not need to run as many CYA tests in case of legal action. Instead, they could rely on good medicine.

Bad doctors should be sued for real damages but making somebody rich at our expense for a minor mistake is unfair to everybody else. Investigate and prosecute the doctors who don't know what they are doing, pull their licenses and let them become plumbers. But stop punishing everybody for a few bad actors.

[chiram97]

Understand, tort reform advocates do not advocate some kind of immunity from lawsuit. They advocate a system to weed out the firvolous lawsuits from the good ones. Something like 'loser pays' where the loser of a tort would have to pay legal costs for the winner. This would encourage insurance companies to not settle when they think they can win, and create a powerful incentive for plaintiff lawyers to pick their cases more carefully.

When a sugeon sews his watch into a patient, that's malpractice. But alot of medical lawsuits...ALOT of them...end up being situations where a patient enduring the natural risk of a medical procedure is simply unlucky and things go wrong. The surgeon or doctor may have done his job perfectly and it can still go badly. People aren't as easy to fix as cars. The thing is, even when a plaintiff has a bad case, it is STILL cheaper to settle out of court than to fight the frivolous suit. This becomes a virtual extortion racket. One that is making lawyers VERY rich. And those rich lawyers donate heavily to Democrats to keep Tort reform from happening.

Because the doctor fears malpractice, he will pay for malpractice insurance. The more frivolous lawsuits there are the higher those fees, even if he is a good doctor. There are many anecdotal stories out there now where older doctors who would like to still work (at least part time) feel that the cost of malpractice insurance has made it not worth their time. It's alot of work to be a doctor. It's like having a difficult day job and then going home and studying for night class because you are ALWAYS reading the latest journals and developments.

Also, doctors have become so paranoid that they often order tests that they know are EXTREMELY unlikely to indicate the problem. However, if there is even a slight chance that it might, and that turns out to be the issue, they'll be sued. So they play cover-your-a$$, and order extra tests. Now, what happens when demand increases? Yup, prices rise more.

Now your concern about creating and incentive to avoid mistakes is valid. If tort reform went TO FAR in the other direction that would be bad. But realize that stat licensing board in the US are actually OVER-strict. We tend to have a dcotor population that is over-qualified, not under-qualified. That doesn't mean that bad doctors aren't out there or don't slip through, but this country is not on the verge of some malpractice epidemic. Indeed, one can argue that this is bad. It means fewer doctors, and economic 101 tells us that when the supply is kept lower, prices rise.

Now let's understand, Tort Reform in and of itself is not a silver bullet. It doesn't solve the biggest cost problem which is that an aging population is consuming more medical services while the supply of doctors is relatively inelastic. But it will help.

[ern]

It would lower them a bit, but not much. Also those who are harmed by medical mistakes would actually be even worse off.

And Tort reform would do nothing about the death panels that the insurance companies use to deny care.

It surprises me that so many Americans seem not to be aware about Obama’s healthcare plans [a]. During the election, he campaigned for these changes stating that he felt it was unfair to have a system where insurance companies try to escape paying claims and was elected to bring in changes [b].
First of all, too many people do not know that Obama wants to make insurance more available to all. His system is similar to that which works in Holland, Taiwan [c] and Switzerland. It works there and private healthcare companies provide most the insurance to the people there.
FACT - the USA spends more on healthcare PER PERSON than any other nation on the planet [d].
FACT – insurance companies admit that they push up costs, buy politicians and do not pay out for many claims when they should [e].
FACT - the US has higher death rates for kids aged under five than western European countries with universal health coverage [f].

That means that a dead American four year old would have had a better chance of life if they were born in Canada, France, the Netherlands, Cuba, Switzerland, Germany, Japan etc, all of which have universal health coverage. And no western European nation with universal healthcare has moved away from it. And the sad thing is, that the insurance companies have spent loads of money to fight these reforms [g] and loads of politicians are taking the thirty pieces of silver from them to fight the reforms, rather than fight for the health of the American people.

Remember, I back my facts up with evidence. Those who say they are wrong tend not to. If they are wrong, e-mail me with proof and let me know.

[veto]

Just how stupid are you? Doctors pay $100k to $500k per year, depending on their specialty. Where do you think this money comes from, you imbecile? They have to raise their prices to cover it. Suppose you had a lawn mowing company and the price of your mowers soared from $400 to $4000, would you just absorb the cost and say, "Awww, woe is me, I have to be poor because the lawnmower people want more money. Guess I'll just have to live with it." If you believe you would do that, you're even stupider than your stupid question.

Similarly insurance companies can't stay in business when people like John Edwards are suing them for millions, even yes billions, of dollars in phony lawsuits. Yes, the "breast implant = lupus" cases were total bull based on garbage science. The tampons=TSS was also junk science.

Here's a case maybe your limited brain can grasp. In the 1980's John Edwards made twenty to thirty million dollars for himself winning case after case suing doctors for not performing immediate Caesarean section deliveries. The first case he won involved a child with cerebral palsy, which had absolutely nothing to do with the delivery, but Edwards whined and cried for the jury and claimed to be channeling the baby in utero (a baby Edwards would abort in a heartbeat, mind you) as it cried out to him, "Let me be born!" He got three million dollars of a six million dollar award, and was so pleased with his robber baron success that he keps on suing. This is nothing to do with a bad doctor. This is everything to do with an evil lawyer.

Doctors terrified of more lawsuits against them began performing a huge number of c-section deliveries, till the percentage of deliveries was driven up to about 30% of all births. They weren't doing it because it was "best" for the baby, nor for the mother, nor because they would line their pockets from it as our Dear Leader seems to think is the only thing driving up unnecessary procedures. They were doing it to protect themselves from liability. We need to kill all the lawyers and we need to start with idiots like you who think that everyone with more money than themselves is a rich s.o.b. with deep pockets and that ripping the money out of those deep pockets doesn't hurt anyone but the pocket.

Hope that answers your question about the lug nuts..

[teyo]

Lets open your eyes the the 800 pound gorilla in the room. It jacks insurance costs up, creates a paracitic culture. Tort reform is needed. If Dr. Smith has lower insurance costs (and here in Florida can even aquire insurance) Dr. Smith makes more money, orders le unneccessary tests to cover his backside from trial lawyers.

Pay attention, this is where Progressives freak out.

Dr. Smith has a choice, earn more money per patient, or reduce his fees to draw more patients. Now, Dr. Jones next door has the same choice, reduce fees to keep up with Dr. Smith, or go out of business because he didnt reduce his fees.

Now, what do we call this?

All together now.....C..A..P..I..T..A...L..I...S...M

End result, lower medical costs, lower insurance premiums, let the free market drive prices down like it has done with everything that enters that system.

[ahanu]

It would cut down on all those frivolous lawsuits and multi-million dollar court decisions.