http://www.google.com/search?q=CBO+%2B+Tort+Reform&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
"Many doctors pay $ 100,000 to $ 250,000 a year in malpractice insurance even if they've never had a judgment against them. Neurology leads the list of high-cost malpractice insurance. Obstetrics isn't far behind.
Supporters of tort reform argue that expense doesn't just drive up the price of medical care, it also leads to defensive medicine, meaning doctors order all sorts of tests they wouldn't otherwise order just to make sure they won't get sued."
http://advance.uconn.edu/2009/090223/09022302.htm
"defensive medicine" increase health care costs by billions
"About 83 percent reported practicing defensive medicine, with an average of between 18 percent and 28 percent of tests, procedures, referrals, and consultations and 13 percent of hospitalizations ordered for defensive reasons.
Reducing cases? Evidently you don't understand how personal injury lawyers work.
Brian
Because, to them, health-care reform isn't about saving money it is about control and power..
subwm4bush
Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also want to save on health care. But rather than capping jury awards, they hope to cut the number of medical malpractice cases by reducing medical errors, as they explain in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. In other words, to the Republicans, suits and payouts are the ill. To the Democrats, the problem is a slew of medical injuries of which the suits are a symptom. The latest evidence shows the Democrats' diagnosis to be right.
The best attempt to synthesize the academic literature on medical malpractice is Tom Baker's The Medical Malpractice Myth, published last November. Baker, a law professor at the University of Connecticut who studies insurance, argues that the hype about medical malpractice suits is "urban legend mixed with the occasional true story, supported by selective references to academic studies." After all, including legal fees, insurance costs, and payouts, the cost of the suits comes to less than one-half of 1 percent of health-care spending. If anything, there are fewer lawsuits than would be expected, and far more injuries than we usually imagine.
Tucking Fypos
"Elmendorf says that tort reform would reduce the federal deficit $ 54 billion over the next ten years..."
That's 5.4 billion a year, which to you and me is a lot of money, but even in this liberal estimate of savings, is not a whole lot.
Most estimates I have seen equal 2 billion a year, which is even less. Also, tort reform would save zero lives a year.
FrederickS
They would anger the trial lawyers who give millions to Democrats. Former DNC chair Howard Dean said so himself. This health reform isn't about saving money, it's about government control. Never forget that fundamental truth.
oimwoomwio
Diminishing the role of lawyers (and of the fear of lawyers) in health care is certainly a piece of the solution.
The Mayo Clinic keeps costs down better than most, in part by paying its doctors salaries, rather than using the fee-for-service model predominant in the rest of the country. It is beyond me why a doctor should get paid for ordering a test that is performed by someone else. That might be another piece.
We should also set about studying the universal coverage models used in France, Italy, Germany, and Japan. The German model uses private insurers, the French a national insurer, but both cost half of what ours does, and with better outcomes.
As for why Democrats ignore the benefits of tort reform? It may have sommething to do with the influence of the trial lawyers' lobby. However, it should be nooted that, by itself, tort reform may not do al that much for us. Texas has instituted a malpractice award cap, and it hasn't cut their costs by much at all. Some of this is probably due to the large number of illegals using the ER as a first line of defense, but I'm not ready to chalk the whole problem up to that.
Good question.
Liberals Destroy Farm Land
Because Obama and his advisors and Chicago gang at the white house are all Lawyers- Hey they want so much more money from us they want Animals to now sue people! They are that greedy! I bet you anything SEIU and ACORN org people sue the most and destroy the system the most, and now they got Obama to even pass their bills and give them more money that Americans work so hard for!
Smart Kat
Here is a CNN report that stated "defensive medicine" is tied with the cost of maintaining record (thanks to the fact that each insurance company has different forms) as the top two of the 6 biggest moeny wasters in healthcare.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/10/news/economy/healthcare_money_wasters/index.htm
The politicians are against tort reform because most of them are lawyers and many are paid off by the lawyers' lobbyists.
The people are often against it because they buy the lie that tort reform would mean that they couldn't sue doctors. Instead, tort reform just puts some limits to prevent frivilous lawsuits. Things like requiring the person suing to pay for the court costs for both sides if it turns out the lawsuit was frivious. This would prevent lawyers from taking any case that doesn't actually have merit.
But tort reform isn't all we need to do. If the insurance companies standardize their forms, that would save a LOT of money! The government should give a deadline for the insurance companies to standardize and if they don't the government would step in. No business wants the government stepping in to mess with their way of doing business, so the ins co.s will do it themselves.
Orignal From: CBO says Tort Reform would save Billions, why do the Democrats Ignore this method of reducing costs?
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