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The law was never enacted to do those things, propaganda notwithstanding. It was designed to line the pockets of the HC companies.
Report: Texas' tort law has failed to reduce health costs, attract doctors
A national report released Wednesday says the 2003 Texas law that limited damage awards in malpractice suits has caused health care spending to rise and has not significantly increased the number of doctors in Texas.
The report claims that Medicare spending in Texas has risen faster than the national average, and so have private health insurance premiums. It also says that, contrary to Perry's claims, the per capita increase in the number of doctors practicing in the state has been much slower since the state passed the so-called tort reform law than it was before the law.
Regarding Medicare costs, the Public Citizen report says that proponents of lawsuit limits say that doctors would order fewer tests and practice less "defensive medicine" if they didn't have to fear as many lawsuits. "In fact," the report says, "Medicare diagnostic testing expenditures in Texas not only increased during this time frame (2003 to 2007), but rose 25.6 percent faster than the national average."
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The law was never enacted to do those things, propaganda notwithstanding. It was designed to line the pockets of the HC companies.
This part of the Texas miracle.... with the latest tort rform legislation if you don't accept the pre -trial settlement offer and you win the case you could still end up paying the attorney costs for the company you sue... the catch is that if you win less than the pre-settlement offer the plaintiff has to pay the losing team's attorney costs..hows that for a ing sweetheatr deal?
They didn't go far enough! Outlaw lawsuits!
I thought we established in a related thread that indeed there was a measurable benefit to doctors, that did not however get passed on to the consumer. Do you recall, ElNono?
(Anyway, it's easily checked...)
Did you expect any other conclusion from Public Citizen?
Any study showing ANY reduction in TX health costs?
Any reduction in doctor's liability insurance premiums?
There was some influx in doctors I heard, but TX still ranks 42nd in docs per 100K population.
Don't recall the specifics, but in all honesty, isn't that expected? It's not like doctors have an incentive to pass the savings.
"It's not like doctors have an incentive to pass the savings."
Every doctor will pocket the money saved on premiums, surely to compensate himself for feeling so screwed before tort reform.
Perhaps you have another source that says otherwise?
Did you expect any other conclusion from Public Citizen?
Pretty shoddy report IMO. There's a whole slew of factors that contribute to the end cost of healthcare, of which tort reform is just one. The report looks at what happened to the end cost, notes a change made to one single factor, ignores all the other factors and leaves it to the reader to just assume that the change in the end result is a direct result of the change made to the single factor.
A + B + C = D. We tinkered with A, we didn't like what happened with D. Let's ignore what may have happened with B & C and just conclude that the negative result of D is solely caused by what we did with A.
Pretty much.
"contribute to the end cost of healthcare, of which tort reform is just one"
malpractice costs (insurance and payouts) are tiny part of the national health care bill, less the 2% maybe less the 1%,IIRC. And of course only minority of the payouts could be called excessive, or the suits called frivolous. iow, tort reform is just another right-wing lie about health care costs.
If B and C were not modified, then how is it a bad conclusion?
Speaking of frivolous lawsuits (off topic)
That SA cop that got hit and killed last year? His family is suing the driver whose car broke down that the cop stopped to help (along with others more directly involved like the drunk and the bar he was at)
WTF?
Soooo if a cop stops to help me on the side of a road and they get hit, I can expect to be sued?
More docs per capita does not mean better health. There is no correlation (within the boarder of this country).
However, there is a correlation with number of people on maintenance drugs, more elective surgeries, doctor's visits and flu shots, and, of course, COST with having more doctors per capita.
Now, maybe the docs just live where the sick people are. Chicken or egg?
It's pretty well accepted by serious observers that there has been an epidemic of diagnoses rather than an epidemic of disease.
(Not to take away from the real diseases Americans increasingly inflict on themselves by eating the Standard American Diet, S.A.D., food-like industrial substances flogged by BigFood and BigFarma)
BigPharma's DTC marketing suckers people into believing they need those drugs, and of course, docs prescribe drugs because that's a main source of revenue. Ever go to doc and NOT come out with a prescription?
USA also has 90% of the lawyers on the planet, and a lot of those lawyers go ambulance chasing (not literally) to drum up business for themselves. "see you in court" is American's True Prayer.
Another way USA is really ed up is that there is a huge shortage of primary care docs (doctoring is a closed sect, limitng its supply to keep it way below demand), certainly not enough to care for current sickos, never mind the millions of sickos soon to be covered by health reform.
Good:
Didn't really control or look at other variables, although it is fairly reasonable to conclude that premiums would drop, and that new entrants would enter the market, due to lower barriers to entry (lower provisions/ or more certainty for losses)Texas physicians have witnessed a 25% overall drop in liability rates since 2003, the state insurance department says. For the first time, the state's largest medical liability carrier, Texas Medical Liability Trust, saw a 50% reduction in lawsuit filings, this from 2003 to 2008. Texas went from four insurers to more than 30 during that period.
Bad:
Again no real examination as to whether this might have been due to something as simple as population growth, or the opening of a new medical school or two.According to the Texas Medical Board, medical license applications have soared from 2,561 to 4,041 -- a 58% jump. At the same time, the number of neurosurgeons has climbed 12%, while the supply of orthopedic surgeons has risen 9%.
Not really all that compelling, IMO.
That said, I think tort reform is a fairly good thing, and should be tried, as long as unreasonable barriers to those genuinely harmed are not put up.
I just harbor no illusions that it is some magic bullet.
The importance of malpractice suits as a cost driver is over-hyped but not negligible.
As long as you've done your due diligence to look at B & C and can confirm they didn't change then it's not a bad conclusion. The report from the OP made no such attempt though.
Exactly.
I especially enjoyed the OP le Tort Reform Actually Increased Health Care Costs in Texas without any supporting evidence whatsoever.
Exactly.
I especially enjoyed the OP le Tort Reform Actually Increased Health Care Costs in Texas without any supporting evidence whatsoever.
I enjoyed your dismissal of the report and article without any supporting evidence as well.
As for the A+B+C=D canard, I guess that works for proponents of tort reform as well. Oh wait, they never said tort reform was THE high-priority reform necessary for reducing health care costs, right?
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