Are “excessive tests” excessive only when they don’t find something? Is a test only deemed necessary when it saves a life?

“The fee for service pricing model coupled with medical practice liabilties combine to create incentive to overtest patients. It is this preverse incentive to test more regardless of effectiveness which is at the root of our runaway health care costs. The House (Obama) plan reforms neither fee for service, nor medical malpractice, and consequently will fail to contain health care costs.”

The old Tort Reform argument. I love this one. Republicans have trumpeted tort reform as the means to end all that is wrong in health care. The theory being, if we make it harder for folks to bring suit against doctors then the doctor’s malpractice insurance premiums will go down and they will pass the savings on to the patient. Keep dreaming.

Some quick facts on Medical Malpractice -

-Less than 1% of all doctors currently practicing in the US will be subject to a Medical Malpractice lawsuit during their entire career.

-Counter that with – between 44,000 and 98,000 people die each year due to preventable medical errors (granted these errors are not only the fault of doctors but you can bet hospitals would hide behind any immunity granted to their doctors).

-The cost of all US malpractice suits comes to less than one-half of 1 percent of health-care spending.

-Records maintained by the National Center for State Courts show that population-adjusted tort filings declined from 1992 to 2001. The average change in tort filings was a 15% decrease.

-Despite the Republican mantra that tort cases, namely med. mal. cases have explode in numbers over the years, The Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), found that the number of civil trials dropped by 47% between 1992 and 2001.

-The Department of Justice is that the median inflation-adjusted awards in all tort cases dropped 56.3% between 1992 and 2001 to $28,000.

Tort reform is a myth. Plus, tort reform isn’t just aimed at reducing the liability of Doctors, it is also aimed at reducing strict and products liability claims against manufacturers.

Finally, tort reformers always forget to ask the obvious question. Who benefits most from this fabricated idea that doctors are being sued by the boat loads? The answer…The insurance companies. Funny, they seem to be benefitting from our screwed up health care system too.

@Everybody Else – just remember – next time someone brings up “Tort Reform” in reference to the healthcare debate – know one thing – they do not have clue what they are talking about just like our friend Cellar-Door.