We had the tort reform scam before the Florida legislature, and it was shown that the numbers that the industry was using reflected all legal costs, including the retainers for lawyers and “experts”, not just payouts.

If the Florida medical establishment would dump about a dozen doctors most of the medical litigation in the state would disappear. It is a tiny percentage of bad doctors that are generating most of the court cases. I think that a half dozen malpractice cases should be sufficient to take someone’s license. Given the way that hospitals and doctors reflexively cover up evidence of errors and incompetence, the cases that make it court are, almost always, really obvious screw-ups.

They still make a profit, and still pay their executives obscene salaries. The doctors should be policing their own ranks, and calling for regulation on the insurance companies, not siding with the people who are screwing them and attacking patients.

In short, even if tort reform reduced malpractice insurance costs to ZERO (which can’t happen), it would reduce health care costs by less than 0.3%. You could probably get bigger savings by switching to cheaper stethoscopes or something else trivial like that. The “medicine is expensive because of lawsuits” argument is Massive Fail. The math just don’t support it.

But wait, I forgot the US national slogan: “Math is hard!” We have become the nation of Teen Talk Barbie. Pathetic.

– Badtux the Numbers Penguin
.-= ´s last blog ..Saturday Musical Social Commentary =-.