CC Writer, tort costs are minimal part of healthcare costs, yet you include it as one of your "most important" ones. Ok, i see now it's a decades long conservative talking point. Figures.
On “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Senators Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, and John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, seemed to agree that medical malpractice lawsuits are driving up health care costs and should be limited in some way. “We’ve got to find some way of getting rid of the frivolous cases, and most of them are,” Mr. Hatch said. “And that’s doable, most definitely,” Mr. Kerry replied.
But some academics who study the system are less certain. One critic is Tom Baker, a professor of law and health sciences at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and author of “The Medical Malpractice Myth,” who believes that making the legal system less receptive to medical malpractice lawsuits will not significantly affect the costs of medical care. He spoke with the freelance writer Anne Underwood.
Q. A lot of people seem to have taken up the cause of tort reform. Why isn’t it included in the health care legislation pending on Capitol Hill?
A. Because it’s a red herring. It’s become a talking point for those who want to obstruct change. But [tort reform] doesn’t accomplish the goal of bringing down costs.
Q. Why not?
A. As the cost of health care goes up, the medical liability component of it has stayed fairly constant. That means it’s part of the medical price inflation system, but it’s not driving it. The number of claims is small relative to actual cases of medical malpractice.
Q. But critics of the current system say that 10 to 15 percent of medical costs are due to medical malpractice.
A. That’s wildly exaggerated. According to the actuarial consulting firm Towers Perrin, medical malpractice tort costs were $30.4 billion in 2007, the last year for which data are available. We have a more than a $2 trillion health care system. That puts litigation costs and malpractice insurance at 1 to 1.5 percent of total medical costs. That’s a rounding error. Liability isn’t even the tail on the cost dog. It’s the hair on the end of the tail.
The fact (or not) that some two thirds of Americans were against Obamacare at the beginning is irrelevant. If it were relevant how much would the GOP's bullshit scare campaign (death panels!) have contributed to that.
I'm thinking relatively few doctors would have retired early because of an ideological opposition to Obamacare. Some would have. Sabotage would have been in fewer minds.
Most now don't want repeal and replace. Your crowd has had 7y, yet still don't have a better alternative. Most Americans want a fix. How do you stand on that?
there is more than just a wee bit of a clash between your bemoaning folks losing their beloved established providers (which happened all the time before Obamacare/the ACA came along) and your call for folks to constantly evaluate and switch their providers according to who charges the least for what -- and then there's the further wrinkle of folks in immediately bad shape after accidents or heart attacks or shootings or whatever being able, let alone expected, to tell their first responders 'hang on a minute, gotta go online and check prices before you take me anywhere for the life-saving emergency and follow-on care I so urgently need'
your notion that folks (like me) who have pre-existing conditions should be handled separately, in high-risk pools or whatever, rather than included in the overall insured pool and treated like any other folks by insurers is absolute bullshit, a ridiculous crock that has never worked in practice -- nobody, neither insurers nor insureds, knows what any individual's lifetime medical costs will be, whether they presently have pre-existing conditions or not -- shit happens, at any and all ages previously perfectly healthy people get in accidents/get shot/get cancer/etc. -- so everybody should pay the same insurance rate which it takes to cover everybody, period -- splitting up the risk pool is the categorically wrong approach
you did get one important thing right -- leaving aside legitimate pro-bono/charitable provisions of care (which aren't/wouldn't be needed in a universal-coverage system), it should be flatly illegal for any provider to charge any patient more or less than any other patient for the same thing -- and I would add that insurers using selected/limited provider networks to provide coverages that only cover in-network provisions of care should also be flatly illegal -- as is the case with e.g. Medicare
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
