Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The Medical Malpractice Myth

I've written here about this before, but it bears repeating. The high cost of healthcare is not due to frivolous malpractice suits nor outragious jury awards. It's a myth, which is a polite way of saying it's a lie, perpetrated by insurance companies for the most part. And it's a myth in so many ways.

Ezra Klein in Slate writes about the subject:

The Republican answer to runaway health-care spending is to cap jury awards in medical malpractice suits...

But rather than capping jury awards, [Hillary Clinton and Brarak Obama] hope to cut the number of medical malpractice cases by reducing medical errors..
Seems that multiple studies done by such organizations as the Harvard Medical Practice and RAND show that the reason medical malpractice costs are high (yet only 0.5% of total healthcare costs) is that there is more malpractice. What a concept!

When doctors and medical organizations such as the American Society of Anesthesiologists completed a study of increased malpractice suits, they worked at reducing malpractice rather than trying to cap awards. They instituted measures to reduce medical errors and that resulted in premiums being rolled back to 1985 levels.

There's lots more in this article. Check it out.


Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very nice site!

4:13 AM, August 08, 2006  

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