Bush Health Ins malpractice lawsuits cap 10y: saves 37B of 15T Health Cost

[papau]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/16/second.term.health.ap/index.html

Bush's health plan: Cap suits, contain costs
Tuesday, November 16, 2004 Posted: 12:01 PM EST (1701 GMT)

BUSH'S HEALTH PLAN Bush wants to limit jury awards from malpractice lawsuits, give individuals more control over their health care spending through tax breaks and increase the role of private insurers in Medicare. Impact: The Bush administration says its plan would make health insurance accessible to more than 11 million people who don't already have it. Critics say the changes would do little to stem costs and could even make health care less affordable.


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Limiting jury awards in medical malpractice lawsuits is President Bush's health care priority in his second term agenda, but there is strong disagreement over whether such caps would help contain rising costs.<snip>

The nation spends more than $1.5 trillion a year on health care. Costs are growing much faster than the overall economy and the number of uninsured has increased by 5 million people to 45 million in the past four years. The public is expressing concern about being able to hold on to health insurance and afford medical care.

Republicans and other advocates of capping the damages that juries can award argue that suits without merit drive up health care costs in two ways: forcing malpractice insurance rates up and encouraging the practice of defensive medicine.

Karen Ignagni, chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, said such suits add up to $100 billion a year, when unnecessary tests doctors order to ward off being sued are added in. "Then there's the whole issue of safety and quality. Providers are afraid to talk about things that go wrong because they are afraid of being sued," she said.<snip>

An analysis of the Bush health plan by the consulting firm the Lewin Group put the savings from changes in liability at $37 billion over 10 years.<snip>

[BlueEyedSon]

1. 2%? BFD

[Straight Shooter]

2. "encouraging the practice of defensive medicine"

Bull. Defensive medicine is here to stay, technology drives it as much if not more so than fear of being hit with a mal suit.

How about doing a little regulation amongst the doctors. Their records of violations of standards and ethics needs to be more transparent to potential patients. I, for one, would not want to choose a family physician with a history of patient complaints, nor would I want a surgeon whose patients present an abnormal number of bad outcomes.

As usual, bush smashes every egg in the henhouse, trying to destroy the bad egg, instead of confronting the chickens.

Ack, what a bad analogy :)