Misdirection on Malpractice

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-medmal10jan10.story
EDITORIAL
Misdirection on Malpractice

January 10, 2005

There's not much evidence to support President Bush's assertion last week that medical malpractice awards are to blame for high healthcare costs. For one thing, insurers that have raised malpractice premiums in recent years have tended to do so less because of soaring jury awards than because of declining stock market returns.

What the anecdotes cited by Bush do show is a troubling, lottery-style arbitrariness in juries' pain-and-suffering awards, whose median has soared from $474,536 in 1996 to more than $1 million.

Trial lawyers focus on claims with the highest reward potential while ignoring other claims with merit, and they admit they concentrate on states that have no caps on pain-and-suffering damages. That alone is reason to try to make the system fairer for both doctors and patients, but what Bush wants is too narrow and punitive.

Last year, the Senate killed a House- approved bill to impose the same cap that Bush called for in his speech: a $250,000 limit on pain-and-suffering damages. We hope the Senate shows similar restraint this year; the cap is based on a limit that California imposed in 1975 and has never raised. <snip>

[patdem]

1. Locking, this is a dupe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x96351