Opinions & Editorials: Health Care
Here’s What is Stopping Tort Reform
James Copland, The Manhattan Institute
10.19.09
(Washington Examiner) In his September 9, nationally televised speech before a joint session of Congress, President Obama made news by saying that medical-malpractice litigation “may be contributing to unnecessary costs” in the U.S. health-care system.
Since then, trial-lawyer advocates—including their lobbying arm, the American Association for Justice (AAJ), and various allied “consumer” groups such as the Center for Justice and Democracy—have been engaged in a fierce counter-attack. Front-and-center among the lawyer-advocates’ arguments is that litigation is too small a piece of the health-care puzzle to make much difference.
Montana Sets Example of Medical Tort Reform
Billings Gazette Staff
10.11.09
(Billings Gazette) Most Americans would agree that “frivolous” lawsuits should be avoided, but how can the merits of a malpractice complaint be determined outside of the regular court system? What should be done to protect health care providers from “frivolous” litigation while still safeguarding the rights of individuals who were harmed by doctors or hospitals that failed to meet professional standards of care?
On page 207 of a 263-page summary of the Senate Finance Committee’s amended health care bill, there’s a paragraph about medical malpractice that says: “Congress should consider establishing a state demonstration program to evaluate alternatives to the civil litigation system.”
Defensive Medicine Takes a Financial Toll
Dr. Ogelsby Young
10.04.09
Total spending on medical malpractice was estimated at $30.4 billion in 2007. Although that is a substantial figure, those against medical-legal tort reform argue that it amounts to just over 1 percent of total U.S. health care spending. What they fail to recognize are the hidden costs of our medical-legal practice system - the indirect costs of defensive medicine.
All physicians would admit to ordering lab tests, recommending radiological studies and even performing procedures to avoid a lawsuit or better defend ourselves if we are sued.
Look no further than my specialty of obstetrics for a good example of defensive medicine. Our country’s cesarean section rate in 1970 was 5 percent. Today more than 30 percent of births are by cesarean section. Babies have not grown that much bigger! And, remarkably, the incidence of cerebral palsy has not changed during the 35 years of increasing cesarean section rates. Good science has shown that less than 10 percent of cerebral palsy has anything to do with events during labor and delivery. Regrettably, obstetricians have learned that our liability for the outcome of a birth is markedly reduced by performing a c-section. As one of my colleagues said, “We are never sued for the cesarean section we have done, but when we are sued it is often for the c-section we did not perform.”
Vaccine Preemption
Jack Park
10.12.09
Do you plan to be vaccinated for the swine flu? If you have a bad reaction can you sue the vaccine manufacturer? If you live in Georgia, you will be able to file suit, but not if you live in New York, among other places.
Last week, the first doses of swine flu vaccine began to be arrive at hospitals, doctor’s offices, and clinics. A short time ago, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the government has ordered 195 million doses. One might think that, as Yahoo News explained, “Getting licensing from the FDA means that the vaccine is made properly and meets specific manufacturing and quality standards” and that the government “will keep a sharp eye for any very rare side effects.”
Obama’s Tort Reform: A Tale of Two States
Bob Dorigo Jones (read his bio here)
10.27.09
President Obama’s promise to conduct “demonstration projects” to determine whether medical liability and tort reform will work is a day late and many billions of dollars short. Key states already tell the tale about what works. Employers pay up to twice the cost for health insurance and health-related services in states that have expansive medical liability laws than they do in states where medical liability reform has been enacted.
There is a clear linkage between the cost of health care in a state and the nature of the state’s medical liability laws.
CBO Underestimates Benefits of Malpractice Reform
Dr. Lawrence McQuillan, Pacific Research Institute
11.03.09
Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said medical-liability reforms could save about $11 billion annually. This assessment is a gross underestimate of the potential benefits of reform and was intended to give cover to congressional Democrats who say malpractice-liability costs are trifling. But a full accounting shows the benefits would be a hefty $242 billion a year, more than 10 percent of America’s health expenditures.
Why Medical Malpractice is Off Limits
Phil Howard, Common Good
09.29.09
Eliminating defensive medicine could save upwards of $200 billion in health-care costs annually, according to estimates by the American Medical Association and others. The cure is a reliable medical malpractice system that patients, doctors and the general public can trust.
But this is the one reform Washington will not seriously consider. That’s because the trial lawyers, among the largest contributors to the Democratic Party, thrive on the unreliable justice system we have now.
Almost all the other groups with a stake in health reform—including patient safety experts, physicians, the AARP, the Chamber of Commerce, schools of public health—support pilot projects such as special health courts that would move beyond today’s hyper-adversarial malpractice lawsuit system to a court that would quickly and reliably distinguish between good and bad care.
The support for some kind of reform reflects a growing awareness among these groups that managing health care sensibly, including containing costs, is almost impossible when doctors go through the day thinking about how to protect themselves from lawsuits.
Obama’s Malpractice Lip Service
Washington Times Editorial
09.16.09
An exceedingly brief discussion of “malpractice reform” was the only noteworthy bone President Obama threw to Republicans in his health care speech Wednesday night. It wasn’t a serious offer of reform.
Reformers in both parties want to curb abusive lawsuits that drive medical costs through the roof. Yet Mr. Obama could not even bring himself to say that any suits are abusive, but merely that doctors are for some reason practicing “defensive medicine [that] may be contributing to unnecessary costs.” To help pacify them, the best he could offer was to “direct” Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius to “authorize demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues.”
Selling Out Doctors to Pay Off Trial Lawyers
Newt Gingrich and Wayne Oliver, Center for Health Transformation
09.07.09
(as printed at Politico.com) Civil justice reform, which is sometimes referred to as “tort reform,” is not addressed in any health reform bill now being considered by Congress. As a matter of fact, civil justice reform is rarely being discussed even though it should be a critical component of every discussion and in every legitimate health reform bill.
Physicians understand its importance. And so do the American people. Many are beginning to wonder why it’s not in any bill.
Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, at a town hall meeting in Virginia last week said, “Tort reform is not in the bill because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers. And, that is the plain and simple truth.”
The Trial Lawyers’ Earmark: Using Medicare to Finance the Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous
Edwin Meese, III and Hans A. von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation
08.31.09
In one of the starkest examples of how plaintiffs’ lawyers want to use Congress to get rich at the expense of the American taxpayer, an amendment that would have generated abusive Medicare litigation on a massive scale—along with the usual huge attorneys’ fees—was recently added to the health care reform bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.[1] The current Medicare statute simply ensures that Medicare is reimbursed for the medical benefits it pays when a third party is legally responsible for a Medicare beneficiary’s injuries or medical costs.
Healthcare Fix Must Encompass Litigation
Newt Gingrich and Wayne Oliver, Center for Health Transformation
08.15.09
As the president and Congress debate how to fix what’s broken in America’s healthcare system, it is critical that civil justice reform be included in the discussion.
The U.S. civil justice system is the most expensive in the world, about double the average cost of virtually any other industrialized nation. But for all of the money spent, our civil justice system neither effectively compensates injured parties (less than 15 cents of every tort-cost dollar goes to those injured from medical negligence) nor encourages the elimination of medical errors.
Just Medicine
Phil Howard, Common Good
08.15.09
WASTE in the health care system costs America upwards of $1 trillion per year. Much of this waste is generated or justified by the fear of legal consequences that infects almost every health care encounter. The good news is that it would be relatively easy to create a new system of reliable justice, one that could support broader reforms to contain costs.
Health Reform’s Taboo Topic
Phil Howard, Common Good
08.15.09
Health-care reform is bogged down because none of the bills before Congress deals with the staggering waste of the current system, estimated to be $700 billion to $1 trillion annually. The waste flows from a culture of health care in which every incentive is to do more—that’s how doctors make money and that’s how they protect themselves from lawsuits.
A Sickly Medical Device Safety Act
Richard Epstein
08.16.09
(Forbes) Congress should protect both drug and device makers from tort liability
Medical Tort Reform Should Be Part of Any Health Care Changes
Editorial, The Detroit News
08.16.09
Tort reform are two words we haven’t heard President Barack Obama speak seriously as he pledges to make his universal health care plan pay for itself through cost-cutting. But we’ll know the president and congressional Democrats are serious about reform when they’re willing to take on one of their most reliable interest groups—plaintiff’s lawyers.
