A 45 year old rancher was awarded 6 million dollars in a medical malpractice lawsuit in Hawaii. Court records reflect that the Plaintiff went to Dr. Seid in 2001 when tests were run for health insurance and showed signs of kidney disease. For 2 years Dr. Seid treated the Plaintiff for high blood pressure, ignoring the test results regarding kidney disease. Dr. Seid eventually referred the Plaintiff to a specialist, but by this time his kidneys were already dead. The Plaintiff's expert witness testified that the Plaintiff should have been referred to a specialist in 2001 and that if his kidneys were timely and properly treated that the loss of his kidney function could have been delayed or prevented. The Plaintiff was a business owner in central Oahu and suffered catastrophic injury to both his health and his business.
Most doctors are skilled and qualified. However, medical studies show that at least 100,000 deaths per year come from medical mistakes. This does not count the toll on persons seriously injured. Unfortunately, this drives the cost of health care up, as patients like the one described above will now either need a lifetime of dialysis or a transplant. Better care not only saves lives, but also saves money.
Tort reform has become a sort of all-purpose Republican cure for what ails the American health care system.
Indeed, long before GOP leaders acknowledged any need for health care reform, Republicans were pushing caps on damages in medical malpractice suits.
Now that a majority of Americans - 75 percent in a poll released Friday - see the need for health care reform, Republicans are trotting out damage caps as a way to control soaring health care spending. Their claim likely will get a prominent mention from GOP leaders at President Barack Obama's bipartisan health care summit on Feb. 25.
There might be good reasons to consider changes in how malpractice suits are handled. But the idea that tort reform would significantly slow, or even alter, the trajectory of U.S. health care spending is not among them.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that tort reform could save $41 billion over the next decade, a figure now being touted by proponents.
To most of us, $41 billion is a lot of money. In the world of health care, it's a tiny drop in a very large ocean. Between now and 2019, annual health care spending will increase by $2 trillion. Not to $2 trillion. It will grow by $2 trillion, from $2.5 trillion to about $4.5 trillion.
The projected savings from capping malpractice awards works out to a 2 percent reduction in what we otherwise would spend.
To think that would significantly change health care costs is like believing that a Mack truck can be diverted by a June bug - even a moderately large June bug - hitting its windshield.
There are reasons to suspect even that analogy overstates the result.
Most of the projected savings from tort reform presumably would come from reducing the practice of "defensive medicine" - extra tests doctors sometimes order to protect themselves from being sued.
But capping malpractice damages - and not even all damages, just those for what is commonly called "pain and suffering" - does not reduce the chance that a patient will sue. So why would doctors stop practicing defensive medicine?
One rather cynical answer is that the caps might reduce the chances that at least some patients could sue: The elderly, young adults and the poor.
So-called economic damages represent the largest part of malpractice awards. They are intended to be payment for things such as lost wages or future medical costs.
Elderly patients already are out of the work force, so their economic damages are minimal. The same is true of young people and poor people whose lost wages may not be enough to cover the cost of bringing suit.
Republican dogma holds that too many "frivolous" malpractice cases already are filed by "greedy trial lawyers." The evidence says otherwise. Most malpractice victims never sue and never get compensation, suggesting "trial lawyers" are missing a lot of business.
One recent Harvard study, based on records in New York hospitals, found that fewer than half of patients who suffered what physician reviews considered to be malpractice actually bring suit.
That's not the only flaw in the current system. Some people who didn't get bad care - just a bad outcome - sue. Those cases should be weeded out.
But damage caps won't do that. The only people affected by damage caps are those who were harmed by preventable errors.
Making the system fairer to doctors and patients is a worthwhile goal. But selling "tort reform" as a miracle cure for health care spending? That's just snake oil.
http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-platform/published-editorials/2010/02/caps-wont-slow-soaring-health-spending/
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Illinois Supreme Court strikes down medical malpractice caps
By: Mike Colias Feb. 04, 2010
(Crain's) - The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday struck down limits on jury awards in medical malpractice cases passed by the Legislature four years ago amid spiking liability costs for medical providers.
The court ruled that the caps on pain and suffering and other non-economic damages - $500,000 per case for doctors and $1 million for hospitals - are unconstitutional.
The court's opinion upholds a 2007 ruling by a Cook County Circuit Court judge determining that the law violated the Illinois Constitution's "separation of powers" clause, essentially finding that lawmakers interfered with the right of juries to determine fair damages.
It's the third time the state's high court has quashed limits on medical malpractice awards, having tossed out similar laws in 1976 and 1997.
The ruling is a blow to physicians, hospitals and malpractice insurers, who successfully argued in 2005 that frivolous lawsuits and runaway jury verdicts were driving up insurance rates and forcing physicians to leave the state.
The court's ruling stems from a malpractice lawsuit filed in 2006 by the family of a girl who suffered brain damage during her delivery at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park. Illinois' trial bar selected the suit as its "test case" to challenge the law.
Liability insurance rates for Illinois doctors generally have held steady or dipped slightly since the caps took effect in August 2005, according to survey data from Medical Liability Monitor, an Oak Park-based trade publication. That's roughly in line with national trends.
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Anthony Tarricone, AAJ President, recently conducted several interviews on the subject of heathcare reform and medical malpractice. Below are links to two of those interviews. He is also taping an interview to air on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. We will keep you posted as to when this will air.
www.justice.org/clips/KCEN_12-14-2009_06.46.46.wmv
www.justice.org/clips/WWL_12-14-2009_06.42.29.wmv
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No doubt you have heard a great deal on your local news stations about the vigorous debate over healthcare and comprehensive healthcare reforms. Proponents on the issue say that tort reform will reduce the amount of money insurance companies have to pay out to victims of medical negligence, which, they propose, will lead to lower medical malpractice premiums for physicians, which, in turn, will lead to lower healthcare costs and health insurance premiums for all Americans. But is that the case?
The American Association for Justice (AAJ) released this month a report showing that Medical Malpractice insurance company profits have gone up in all states, but at a faster rate when a state enacts caps. Insurance company profits are an average 24% higher in the 30 states with malpractice caps. The report also shows that insurance company profits are the only effect of caps on damages. In 2008, the average profit of the 10 largest medical malpractice insures was higher than 99% of the Fortune 500 companies and 35 times higher than Fortune 500 average.
We encourage you to read a summary of the report provided below or in it's entirety by clicking on the link provided at the end of the summary.
Report: State Tort Reforms Don't Lower Premiums For Doctors or Patients
Insurance company profits 24% higher in states with severe restrictions on patients' rights
Washington, DC-State tort reforms have provided a boom to insurance companies, leading to record profits while physician and patient premiums continue to skyrocket.
An analysis of data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and company annual statements shows malpractice insurer profits are 24 percent higher in states with caps. In these cap states, insurers took in 3.5 times more in premiums than they paid out in 2008. In contrast, insurers in states without caps took in just over twice what they paid in claims.
The findings also show absolutely no correlation between the cost of malpractice premiums and health insurance premiums. For example, Maine has the ninth lowest malpractice premiums but the fourth highest health insurance premiums. Conversely, Nevada has the third lowest health insurance premiums nationally, but malpractice premiums are the country's ninth highest, despite having a cap in place for eight years.
"The data are clear: tort reform is just another insurance company handout," said American Association for Justice President Anthony Tarricone. "Insurers cried wolf and demanded tort reform, only to pocket the profits and never pass savings onto physicians or patients. While 98,000 people die every year from preventable medical errors, it's nonsensical to limit patients' rights simply to fill insurance company coffers."
The report also shows how medical negligence laws were passed under false pretenses. The medical malpractice insurance industry has seen a 47 percent increase in profitability in the last 10 years. Overblown "reported" losses were used by the insurance industry to justify new measures restricting the rights of those injured by medical negligence.
Finally, the report explains the dynamics of the insurance cycle and trends in premium pricing, which are well-known by analysts within the insurance industry. Remarkably, the industry's leaders are already positioning to claim another "tort crisis" and to lobby for even more severe restrictions on patients' rights in 2012.
To view a copy of Insurance Company Handout: How the Industry Used Tort Reform to Increase Profits While Americans' Premiums Soared, visit http://www.justice.org/clips/Insurance_Company_Handout.pdf.
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Unnecessary injuries to patients in a hospital setting may result from medical residents who are obtaining needed and valuable training, but who lack experience, are inadequately supervised or may be overly fatigued from not having adequate rest periods. This can result in errors in judgment, errors in diagnosis and treatment errors leading to injury and death to patients.
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