Do you know how much malpractice insurance costs?
El Tecolote
Doctors have to have some kind of income above and beyond their expenses, or they'd get into something else.
Government health care wouldn't be an issue if there were no doctors.
Matt W
Defensive medicine: Medical practices designed to avert the future possibility of malpractice suits. In defensive medicine, responses are undertaken primarily to avoid liability rather than to benefit the patient. Doctors may order tests, procedures, or visits, or avoid high-risk patients or procedures primarily (but not necessarily solely) to reduce their exposure to malpractice liability. Defensive medicine is one of the least desirable effects of the rise in medical litigation. Defensive medicine increases the cost of health care and may expose patients to unnecessary risks.
jim020347
Of course they do, so does medicare and medicaid fraud, illegal immigrants using free ER treatment
Man
Doctors must be held accountable.
Reform the insurance industry.
Samantha Jones
No, because most of the lawsuits are against a tiny percentage of doctors and hospitals and malpractice insurance is expensive because of these few bad apples. Most of the cases are against doctors who repeatedly make bad decisions and should have lost their license long ago.
If the medical community would police its doctors and hospitals better, malpractice would be eradicated and there would be no lawsuits or high premiums for insurance to protect against them.
portia
It costs a lot of money, also try suing a lawyer for what they sometimes try to do. they are crooks with a capital "C"
Peace through blinding force
Some, but it's mostly due to setting-up the system where you do not directly pay your own expenses. Such a thing has ALWAYS been known to guarantee price escalation.
We warned Democrats about that and they said "I know" as they wrote the laws that made it happen.
oldbull
I do know that the cost's vary for different doctors, depending on their specialty & geographical area. However, I personally know two doctors that have closed their practices in the past year. In both cases their reason for closing was that their insurance costs had gotten to the point that they could no longer afford them. Of course, these high costs are basically caused by malpractice suits and the extremely high awards made by courts and or judges. If some form of legislation limiting the monetary awards to a reasonable level were put into effect it would greatly decrease the costs of health care. So far, Obama, Pelosi, Ried and the democratic majority in both the house and senate refuse to act on this problem.
Pfo
Yes, they do, but malpractice does happen and doctors should be responsible for it.
Doing away with malpractice lawsuits introduces new problems.
slappyjk
The defense of potential law suits causes patients to endure needless operations, tests and procedures. Every health care business and provider has to pay significant fees for malpractice insurance, these costs are ALL passed onto the patient.
Many hospitals, nursing homes and doctors have to shut down or move to nother states due to costs associated with the defense from law suits.
The cost of every "run-away jury" award, settlement and award is passed onto the consumer.
The USA is the only country who does not follow the rest of the world, the "English court of Law", where the loser pays the legal expenses to the winner of the suit. Frivolous law suits only exist in America.
As a result, trial lawyer play the numbers game, initiating 25 law suits, hoping just one will pay off. Trial lawyers take 40% contingency fees, trolling the ghettos to create new law suits.
When anyone suggests placing reasonable caps on awards and judgements, liberals start pointing fingers at insurance co's and drug co's because they don't want to admit that caps is a genuinely fair compromise.
The bottom line- trial lawyers are one of the biggest contributors to democrats, Obama accepted HUGE money from trial lawyers, the deal is simple- if dems take their money, you have to oppose all tort reform, every liberal politician takes their money.
Anyone concerned with the cost of health care would advocate reasonable caps and limits on jury awards and judgements.
If you oppose caps, its 99.9% chance you have another agenda- socialism. Trial lawyers and democrats are business partners.
Orignal From: Do malpractice lawsuits have anything to do with the rising health care costs?
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