"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"
Obama seems to have frowned on tort reform in favor of patients right to file claims. Seems this contradicts the ability to lower costs.
"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."
Just this morning, a physician being interviewed claimed a catch 22 where on the one hand proposals such as quality and not quantity restricting certain tests does not take into consideration that physicians cannot protect themselves against malpractice suits if they do not order additional tests. On the other hand, if you can't give additional tests, or you order the wrong one then the physician may see a malpractice claim for following the quality and not quantity proposal. So the problem seems to be the administration does not push for tort reform, yet supports limiting the quantity of tests.
"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."
Do you think there might be campaign contributions that may have an effect on the above? I'm not certain as I believe most politicians are not worried about the public and I believe most are going to vote where the money's at. Transparency in regard to the lobbyist effect.
Too complicated for me, I think. mo. .. nic