The State of Medical Malpractice Reform in the Union
Hans von Spakovsky /
Forgive me if I seem skeptical of President Obama’s assertion last evening in his State of the Union address when he said that he was “willing to look at other ideas to bring down [health care] costs, including one that Republicans suggested last year: medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits.”
The president has in the past made clear his opposition to such reform, saying that he did not “believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet.” This despite the fact that abusive tort litigation against medical providers greatly increases medical malpractice-insurance costs, raising the costs of health care and driving providers out of business. Such litigation also forces almost all doctors to practice “defensive medicine” – ordering unnecessary tests and treatments to avoid potential lawsuits. This literally adds hundreds of billions of dollars to the cost of health care every year.
In 2009 when President Obama addressed Congress on health care, he made a very dubious offer of future medical malpractice pilot projects and supposedly ordered his Secretary of Health and Human Service, Kathleen Sebelius, to move forward with “authorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues.” (more…)