In his speech on healthcare reform before a joint session of Congress, President Obama said “that he wants to look at a ‘range of ideas’ to put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine.” Obama says some medical malpractice reform can help bring down health care costs. The president says he doesn’t think it’s a ’silver bullet,’ but that he knows that doctors practicing ‘defensive medicine’ can lead to unnecessary costs.
While I understand the motivation behind the reasoning, the fact of the matter is that tort reform isn’t the solution to the ever rising cost of healthcare. Tort reform isn’t even one of the solutions.
In 2005, Missouri capped non-economic damages at $350,000 per defendant and made it more difficult for cases to be filed in venues that are seen as favorable to plaintiffs. Since the 2005 reforms in Missouri, malpractice premiums for doctors have fallen about 25-30%. But overall health care costs in Missouri continue to rise. The same is true in states that have enacted even more stringent tort reforms, such as Texas and Louisiana.
There are few issues in the healthcare debate that draw more support than tort reform. Many legislators and citizens have been convinced that denying people’s rights to seek fair compensation for injuries due to negligence would rein in frivolous lawsuits that lead to “unjust” cash awards.
Yet, despite the perception that medical malpractice tort has fueled soaring healthcare costs, the data yields a very different perspective. The most reliable estimates, done by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), peg the costs of malpractice litigation at 2 percent of overall healthcare costs. The CBO noted that a reduction of 25 percent to 30 percent in malpractice costs would lower health care expenses by only about 0.4 to 0.5 % and the effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small.
“If you’re talking about payments made on behalf of doctors or hospitals to plaintiffs, that’s actually a drop in the bucket compared to the nation’s $2.2 trillion in health care costs,” said Amitabh Chandra, a professor of public policy at Harvard University. Chandra suggests doctors are committed to tort reform because of the emotional costs of being sued.
The belief that the tort system is rife with frivolous claims is simply false. A study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health concluded that 97% of medical malpractice claims are meritorious. This report is a far cry from the assertions that medical malpractice lawsuits are a just a tool for those seeking “jackpot justice”.
Richard J. Arsenault, 2011
