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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (67075)	11/15/2004 10:41:49 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 89467

It amounts to about half of one percent of their expenses. I really don't think that is an accurate statement. I know that many doctors tens of thousands or even over a hundred thousand a year on malpractice insurance. In particular specialties (like Ob-Gyns) in states that have not had much liability reform, its enough to cause some doctors to move to a different state or close or heavily modify their practice (for example still operating as a gyn, but not delivering babies any more, or even to refuse patients if the doctor has some reason to feel they are more likely than average to sue). The information I can find seems to show malpractice insurance as being more like 2% of the overall cost of medical care (not .5%), plus there would be some additional costs for malpractice that isn't covered. That doesn't sound like a lot but its tens of billions of dollars. It isn't distributed evenly, for some doctors it is a very minor, almost unnoticeable thing, for others it is enormous. And the direct costs of insurance and malpractice awards is probably only a small part of the cost. "Defensive medicine" probably increases costs more than the direct cost for insurance and payouts, probably a lot more. -------------- " Myth No. 4: Malpractice costs are not a big deal -- they amount to less than 2 percent of total health care costs. The number sounds insignificant until you stop to consider that U.S. health care spending was a staggering $1.66 trillion in 2003 -- so we are talking of costs on the order of $16 billion to $32 billion. In the case of Johns Hopkins Medicine, malpractice premiums as a percentage of physicians' total income have risen threefold over the past four years. In 2001 malpractice premiums were about 3 percent of total physician income at Johns Hopkins. They are nearly 10 percent today -- and growing. The irrationality of our current medical justice system leads to the practice of "defensive medicine," in which doctors try to stave off lawsuits by ordering more tests than are medically necessary. Got a headache? You are as likely to get a CAT scan as a couple of aspirin. The added costs of defensive medicine are estimated at $50 billion to $100 billion per year. " washingtonpost.com ---------- Trends in Premiums for Physicians' Medical Malpractice Insurance, by Type of Physician, 1993 to 2002 cbo.gov ------------ Even including "defensive medicine" costs malpractice costs are not the biggest reason for medical care cost increases. I can think of several more important reasons. But they do increase costs more than a negligible amount, a lot more in certain medical areas, and this is an area where something can be done. We can't do much about the fact that our population is ageing, we could but wouldn't want to do anything about the fact that we have more treatments available and since we can do more for people the cost is higher, but we can do something about medical malpractice costs. BTW - I don't have this thread bookmarked. I'll see post to me, but not any other conversation that might be happening about this topic. Tim