tazzygirl
Posts: 37833
Joined: 10/12/2007 Status: offline
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"There are many good reasons for fixing medical malpractice. The system we have doesn’t adequately help patients who have legitimately been injured, many of whom never bother filing a claim. It freaks the hell out of doctors who overreact through doing extra, unnecessary tests and procedures -- known as “defensive medicine.” There’s a crazy-quilt of different regulations based on what state and specialty you’re in. It’s a mess. But reducing health care costs is not a good reason for tort reform. And it won’t at all get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office, which says, “even a reduction of 25 percent to 30 percent in malpractice costs would lower health care costs by only about 0.4 percent to 0.5 percent, and the likely effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small.” Granted, the CBO is somewhat pessimistic of savings in health care in general, but they’re backed up by the actuarial firm of Towers Perrin, which as Tom Baker says in an interview with the NY Times, pegs “litigation costs and malpractice insurance at 1 to 1.5 percent of total medical costs. That’s a rounding error. Liability isn’t even the tail on the cost dog. It’s the hair on the end of the tail.” And those cure-all award caps do diddly. Quoth NPR, “But a review by the The Dallas Morning News found no evidence the malpractice savings had been passed on to consumers. And parts of Texas still have some of the nation's highest medical bills.” Moreover, Weiss Ratings found that malpractice insurance costs rose in a way that doesn’t at all justify faith in caps: over 10 years, premiums rose 35.9% in states with no caps and 48.2% in states with caps. This is one of those articles of faith on how to reduce health care costs that falls apart when you start looking at numbers." http://healthcare.change.org/blog/view/4_reasons_why_tort_reform_wont_be_part_of_health_reform I have seen these numbers before... i have posted them here on the political boards.
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Telling me to take Midol wont help your butthurt. RIP, my demon-child 5-16-11 Duchess of Dissent 1 Dont judge me because I sin differently than you. If you want it sugar coated, dont ask me what i think! It would violate TOS.
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