Posted On: April 27, 2006, 10:39 am CDT

Posted By: Jeffrey E. Martin

When will the general public wake up to the fact that all the talk about the need for tort reform is based on the insurance company lobby trying to limit their responsibilty to compensate people who are severely injured through medical negligence. When rational thought prevails, it is plain to see that experts in the insurance industry are well aware that (a) th enyuer of lawsuits are decreasing each year, (b) th einsurance comopany profits are still quite high, and (c) ther is no guarantee that tort reforms will produce decreased insurance premims for health professionals. So with all of these truths, why would the general public ever voluntarily allow their rights to be limited just so that insurabce company profits can increase?

In a new book entitled "The Medical Malpractice Myth," Tom Baker, Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law and director of the Insurance Center at the University of Connecticut, uses empirical evidence to dismantle the myths that permeate the national debate over medical malpractice and liability insurance costs.

Baker, who spoke today at a briefing for congressional staff on medical malpractice, writes that "the real problem is too much medical malpractice, not too much litigation. Most people do not sue, which means that victims - not doctors, hospitals, or liability insurance companies - bear the lion's share of the costs of medical malpractice."


The research he cites - much of it from medical journals - shows:

Medical errors and negligence kill up to 100,000 Americans each year.
Malpractice suits are rare relative to the number of people killed by medical negligence.
Medical malpractice insurance premiums rise and fall because of the "boom-and-bust" nature of the insurance underwriting cycle.
The average physician paid less than $12,000 for malpractice insurance in 2003.
There are more doctors per capita than ever before.
So-called "tort reforms" have a detrimental impact on patient safety.

"[Baker] convincingly makes the case that malpractice lawsuits actually improve patient care and that big payments are the rare exception, not the rule," writes Library Journal. The review of the book in the Journal of the American Medical Association - an organization with ties to the insurance industry and that is largely responsible for malpractice myths - even reports that, "Baker deftly counters the 'malpractice myth.' It will be difficult for anyone who reads the book to join uncritically the tort reformers' parade."



Summary of "The Medical Malpractice Myth"

On the Hill

Disguised as a measure to improve health care - and cloaked in much of the very rhetoric Tom Baker debunks - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist intends to bring medical malpractice legislation to the Senate floor next week. While doing nothing to lower health care costs or provide insurance to the millions of uninsured Americans or force insurance companies to lower rates, the proposal limits the rights of injured Americans to hold hospitals, HMOs, and nursing homes (even those that commit gross negligence) accountable through the civil justice system.

By the Numbers

Less than 1%: Percent of health care costs attributable to medical malpractice premiums.
[Source: "The Medical Malpractice Myth"]

17.7%: Profit margin of largest malpractice insurers in 2005, more than double the Fortune 500 average.
[Source: "Official Filings of Leading Malpractice Insurers with State Insurance Commissioners"]

It is time for us to open our eyes and ears and realize that we are allowing self interest groups to take away our basic rights that we have had for over 200 years - in order to make certain the insurance co. progits remain high. No one demands that reforms be instituted for business litigation - which far exceeds in number of cases and scope of $ amounts involved compared to cases involving injured people. So why is it acceptable for corporations to receive billions of dollars thru litigation for their lost profits but not acceptable for a person or the family of a person who was blinded, disabled or even killed due to a doctor's carelessness to be compensated fully for all of the pain, suffering, diability, disfigurement or loss of life?

And what does doing away with joint and several liability do to the concept of justice? It shifts the burden of absorbing loss from a wrongdoer to the innocent victim. Once again, the interest protected by Gov Bush's legislation is the insurance comopanies at the expense of the innocent injured people.

Time to wake up and stop being fooled before even more rights are taken away!.