Tornado Alley (PROG)

[DesertDrifter]

part of the healthcare equation has to be cost control. what i find rather interesting is that one of things that the gang of mostly lawyers in the congress conveniently ignore as a place to do some fundamental change that would lower costs would be reform of medical malpractice claims. You never hear it mentioned when they discuss cost cutting on the news shows.

That particular item has several spin-offs... one, some doctors shy away from certain types of practices because of the staggering malpractice insurance premiums. (OB/GYN, for example)

Two, it tends to make some doctors more cautious and run more tests, just to make sure they have all bases covered when their judgement is all that is called for.

And three, they have to fend off nuisance claims. Just one 2 million dollar claim would cover an awful lot of 100 dollar office visits for others.

Getting the contingency parasites off the system would help to the tune of about $5.7 Billion per year, depending upon the source... when over three quarters of the congress is lawyers, they are sure silent about their ambulance chasing brothers. Tort reform should be a relatively easy way to shave some costs off the medical milk cow, but it is much easier for them to yell about other things.

some data from an article:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Malpractice---Medical-Malpractice-Statistics&id=138216

In this article we're going to go over some very alarming statistics regarding the ever increasing problem of medical malpractice.

There is a very good reason that they call lawyers ambulance chasers. The majority of them specialize in what is known as medical malpractice suits. The rate at which these suits are increasing each year is staggering. To get a good understanding of just how serious this problem actually is, we need to look at some numbers.

Of all the malpractice trials in the United States last year, nearly 50% of them were against surgeons and other doctors representing only 75 of the largest counties in the United States. This is according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which is a very good source. This shows that the main problem of these suits is in the most densely populated areas of the country which is where the most income is generated. This can't be a coincidence that the more money there is to be made from these suits the more lawsuits there will be.

Another 33% of the malpractice trials in the United States last year was against non surgical physicians in the 75 largest counties in the country. Adding these two numbers together you get 83% of all medical malpractice suits in the United States last year was against only 75 counties. There are literally thousands of counties in the United States.

Of all the cases that went to trial only 27% of them were won by the plaintiffs in these 75 counties. This is a large indication that most of these malpractice suits are not legit, otherwise there would be more of these cases won.

Close to 19,000 medical malpractice payment reports were made in the US last year according to the Annual Report, National Practitioner Data Bank, US DHHS. This is an absolutely staggering number.

It is estimated that about 25% of all the doctors in the United States get sued on an annual basis. This means that if you are a doctor, especially if you are a surgeon, you have a one in four chance of being hit with a lawsuit each year you are in practice. Makes you wonder why anyone would want to be a doctor in this country.

It is also estimated that between 50 and 65% of all doctors in the United States are sued at least once in their career. That gives you less than a 50% chance of getting through your career without an incident.

What is even more staggering is that of all the malpractice payment reports made world wide, over 80% of those payments were made by United States doctors with the whole rest of the world accounting for just 20% of all payments made for malpractice.

Even interns are not immune from this problem as over 1500 malpractice suits were filed against interns last year alone.

There is no question that these statistics point to an alarming and growing problem in the United States. Unless measures are taken to prevent fraudulent lawsuits, which many of these are, the problem is only going to get worse.