Old Man in the Middle

Maybe the Bush administration should save some of its political capital for something other than medical malpractice tort reform. News Batch provides some perspectives on tort reform. Many issues are addressed. The surprises were that the cost of insurance for doctors as a percentage of revenues is lower than I expected and may not be the cause of doctors leaving practices and insurance premiums are not skyrocketing with some indicators that they are coming down. In addition, News Batch also indicates that although California already enacted some of the provisions of the Bush administrations proposal e.g., cap on non-economic damages back in 1979, it was more likely that insurance reform in CA in 1988 has made the difference. This seems to be confirmed in part in a report by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.

A disturbing bit of information from New Batch is that 4 in 100 hospital patients are in some way harmed. Two 2 of the 4 appear to be unpreventable. However, the most disturbing numbers are that 1 of the 4 is preventable but not negligent and 1 of the 4 is preventable and negligent. We should not be accepting this poor performance. The cost of medical malpractice insurances would surly drop dramatically if performance improved. The Bush administration would serve us better if it found a way to motivate doctors to improve performance. That would also mean less for the trial lawyers. Win win! (Thanks to Paul and Tom for challenging me on this topic.)