Nope.
The meta-studies I've seen (reported upon widely in the national press in the past two or three years), compiling the results from all previous academic studies of health care costs... and looking at all the 'A/B' comparisons that are available to look at (States who have switched to and or from caps on punitive awards, 'reforming' tort laws in their States...), which is the only real-world evidence anyone has to go on --- all came to basically the SAME tentative conclusion:
There *MAY* be a benefit (to the cost of medicine) in capping awards... but if there is, the available evidence appears to only support the claim that it is relatively SMALL in size. (And, of course, left unexplored was the possibility that sanctioning bad medical providers may also *improve* the level of medical care, as well as exacting a cost. After all, the AMA's own surveys establish that approximately 5% of the licensed physicians are the ones that are assessed with roughly 50% of all the tort awards. Which seems to be a statistically normative result, that you would expect to find in most ANY professions... that there are some '5% or so' of 'bad apples' that bring up costs for the rest....)
The latest comprehensive studies on the issue of 'tort reform' put the observable cost/benefit at around 5 or 6% (on average... although one put it as high as 12%....), making it a relatively small contributor to the ever-rising costs of our massively expensive health care system.
OTHER FACTORS appear to be*far larger* contributors to the high costs (far above the average rate of inflation in our nation) of health care, and the extremely POOR cost/effectiveness of our system.
Other reforms that could likely impact cost/performance far more:
1) Patent reform. When Congress EXTENDED patent terms (yet again!), and the FDA wrote the rules so that very minor changes --- such as changes to the packaging, associated buffering agents, color of the capsules, etc., etc., could be sufficient to 're-up' patents when they were about to expire... this PERVERSELY ADDED MORE COSTS to our health care system then any single other identifiable factor.
2) Insurance reform. (Why must health care providers have to deal with literally THOUSANDS of different format insurance forms?????????? It makes no sense at all. Some standardization here would save BIG BUCKS.
3) Reforms to the FDA, and federal medical research funding. (No need for gov funding to go to mere 'treatments'.) The for-profit pharma industry has PLENTY of Capitalistic incentive to develop treatments that people must take. This enhances their profitability of course. No, fed funding should go *exclusively* to areas that the corporations have little or no incentive to research in. Such as natural compounds that are un-patentable or off-patent, so-called 'orphan drugs' where there is not enough profit potential for corps... and CURES, not mere treatments (such as genetic and vaccine research), etc.
4) Reforms/Improvements to the medical profession, and in medical professional licensing.
5) Reforms to government pharmaceutical procurement guidelines.
6) Technological changes in health care delivery (like the ones Bush proposed in the SOU address): mandated nationwide bar-coding for pharmceuticals. (You would not *believe* the numbers of deaths and injuries each year in hospitals, etc, from prescribing mistakes....) This alone (technology improvements/ national mandates) might be able to knock another 10% or so off of health care costs....
7) Legal reforms can certainly be part of the solution, too... (but, several States --- CA, for example --- actually saw their medical costs *increase even faster* when they introduced caps on tort awards... so I would not expect really big savings to be gleaned from this alone.) There seems to be NO SOLID evidence (from unbiased, peer-reviewed study) supporting such a contention. You are certainly free to dream though....
8) Trade barriers/Protectionism in products and services also hugely drive up costs for Americans.
In short: BIG PROBLEM. No 'easy fixes'... but a whole LOT of areas in desperate need of reforms... with problems MADE BY OUR OWN GOVERNMENT heading the list.
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