The relevant issue is not the total cost of dealing with insurance, but the difference between dealing with private insurance and government insurance and just government insurance. You apparently seem to think that the difference is enough to be a major factor in our health care costs, and that absent it our costs would be similar to Europe's or Canada's. In my opinion that idea is very far from true, bordering on being silly.
It's a bigger complaint than the cost of malpractice insurance.
Malpractice insurance is far from the only cost of our malpractice situation in this country. Defensive medicine is probably a bigger cost, and at least the milder versions of it are so ingrained that it would be done as a matter of course, not something that would draw a massive amount of complaints.
Also, at least for many doctors (for example ob-gyns in states that haven't limited malpractice awards), the insurance cost is obviously greater.
In any case I don't think that malpractice reform is more than a factor at the margin either, in terms of the overall health care situation. For some specialties, and in some states it may be a very big factor, in other cases much less of one. I'd never try to make the case that our health care costs would go down to half of what they are now if we only didn't have to worry about malpractice lawsuits
BTW - "At the margin" doesn't mean insignificant, in fact an effect at the margin can be important, it does however imply that it doesn't amount to a "night and day" difference, or cure an overall major problem just be making the one change in one aspect. |
