"I don't mind the A.M.A. lobbying on behalf of doctors in the many areas where physicians and patients have common interests. The association is dead right, for example, in calling for curbs on lawsuits, which raise medical costs for everyone. An excellent study published in 2006 in The New England Journal of Medicine found that for every dollar paid in compensation as a result of lawsuits against doctors, 54 cents goes to legal and administrative costs...Moreover, aggressive law leads to defensive medicine, in the form of extra medical tests that wastes everybody's money. Tort reform should be a part of health reform."
Accepting the statistic quoted in the New England Journal of Medicine at face value as a valid statistical fact, that fact alone is not enough information upon which to base the conclusion that Mr. Kristoff leaps to, which is that we need to restrict the constitutional right of redress that comes to us from as far back as English Common Law. Mr. Kristoff might be unaware of a few other facts that play into that statistic.
The insurance industry, which we have established as being motivated purely by profit, has set up a system that does not allow doctors to admit medical mistakes, denies all claims of medical error, and is so adamant about NOT paying for ANY error that it is willing to pay lawyers hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to limit any eventual award of a mere few thousand dollars. Because they REFUSE to admit any liability in even the most egregious cases of medical error or negligence, the malpractice industry, NOT MALPRACTICE VICTIMS, are driving up the cost of medicine for everyone.
If insurance companies were willing to admit to, and pay for, the mistakes that are made, the system would be in better shape. Instead, they protect the doctors and hospitals that make mistakes, freeing them from the consequences of their errors and allowing them to go on and commit more errors. Eventually insurers will drop a doctor if he has enough lawsuits filed against him, but not before many lives are ruined and hundreds of thousands of dollars or more are paid in legal fees to fight the victims.
Doctors are people and hospitals are not perfect and everyone makes mistakes. But most mistakes that you and I make do not result in catastrophic medical bills for someone or in them losing the use of parts of their bodies or brain functions. When these mistakes happen, it is only fair that the victims be awarded some financial help in dealing with the consequences of those mistakes. But the current system does not allow doctors to admit mistakes, or to face their patients and say they are sorry. It does not provide for proper restitution where restitution is necessary. It is an adversarial system that leaves doctors and other treaters feeling guilty or defensive and patients feeling betrayed and angry while insurance companies keep raking in the profits.
If reform is needed in regards to health care litigation, it is malpractice insurance reform, not tort reform. We should mandate that a truly independent review of claims be made and that doctors and hospitals must admit, or be allowed to admit when they have made errors and be given the opportunity to offer restitution in those cases. It should mandate that State Medical Boards take swift and proportional action in cases where doctors are not performing properly, have lost their faculties, etc.
We should not allow the malpractice insurance industry to keep driving health insurance litigation, playing both ends against each other while their profits increase exponentially each year. Don't take the right to sue away from the victim, take the self-interested profiteer out of the middle of the conflict.
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