With mid-term elections on the horizon, politicians have their campaigns in full swing. While it's not quite the dominating story it was last year, healthcare reform continues to be a political lightning rod and the notion that tort reform will drastically reduce costs continues to crop up in interviews and campaign ads.
Generally when the words tort reform are used, it is in reference to capping the damages that can be awarded from a medical malpractice case. The reasoning, according to tort reform supporters, is that frivolous lawsuits and malpractice insurance premiums are driving up the cost of healthcare. If there was a cap on damages, they say, the malpractice insurance premiums would go down and the cost of healthcare for the average person would go down.
The fact of the matter is that malpractice costs make up only 2% of the total cost of healthcare in the United States. Even the most aggressive tort reform proposals would stand to save very little money overall. In fact, in states where damages for injuries caused by medical errors are limited, there hasn't been a dramatic drop in healthcare cost for the average person. Sure, malpractice insurance premiums for doctors and hospitals fall in some cases, but they are such a small percentage of overall cost that the savings aren't passed on to the consumer.
The real tragedy is that these money saving measures can keep injury victims from getting the help they need. If payouts are reduced arbitrarily, it becomes financially impractical for personal injury attorneys to take on certain cases, even if the claims are meritorious. These victims are then left without legal representation and can't get the help they need to recover.
Another benefit of malpractice lawsuits is that they hold negligent doctors accountable for their errors. Most doctors do wonderful work most of the time, but mistakes are made and some doctors have a pattern of negligent practices. Actually, the majority of malpractice cases are brought against a small percentage of doctors. There are also cases where the negligence is so great that punitive damages above and beyond the economic cost of the errors is the only way to properly hold those responsible accountable. These are the types of cases where a foreign object is left in a person's body after surgery or disease is spread because a clinic didn't dispose of syringes after they were used in order to save money.
Tort reform advocates like to say they are trying to lower costs, but if they restrict the ability of malpractice lawsuits to hold negligent healthcare providers accountable, there's a great chance that we will only see an increase in the number of medical errors. 98,000 people already die each year as the result of medical error, making it the sixth highest preventable cause of death in the country. That's the cost we can't afford.
