A new study found no evidence that health care costs in Texas dipped after a 2003 cons utional amendment limited payouts in medical malpractice lawsuits, despite claims made to voters by some backers of tort reform.
The researchers, who include University of Texas law professor Charles Silver, examined Medicare spending in Texas counties and saw no reduction in doctors' fees for seniors and disabled patients between 2002 and 2009. A 2003 voter campaign in Texas, and some congressional backers of Texas-style tort reform in every state, however, argued that capping damage awards would not onlycurb malpractice lawsuits and insurance costs for doctors, it would lower costs for patients while boosting their access to physicians.
Tort reform is a controversial topic likely to be resurrected by Republicans and doctors' groups who hoped to make it part of the 2010 federal health care law.
The researchers' findings come after a report last fall in which the Ralph Nader-founded consumer group Public Citizen said it found Medicare spending in Texas rose much faster than the national average after tort reform. Critics of that study said that tort reform leaders never promised health care spending would decline and noted that caps on damage awards brought steep drops in malpractice insurance rates for doctors and large increases in new doctors coming to Texas.
Another study yet to be published on physician supply and tort reform, also by Silver's group, agrees that malpractice suits and payouts sharply dropped after tort reform. But that study strongly disputes claims of a mass exodus of Texas doctors before tort reform and huge increases afterward.
On the question of health care costs, Silver's group focused on the federal government's Medicare program, which makes up 20 percent of the $2.5 trillion spent on U.S. health care.
That group — consisting of two Republicans, a Democrat and a foreign national, according to the researchers — analyzed data at the county level in Texas, said Tom Baker, author of a 2005 book, "The Medical Malpractice Myth," and a professor of law and health sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
"This is a very highly regarded study, and this team is highly regarded," Baker said. The study was paid for by the researchers' universities, Silver said, and the paper was published this month in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.
"Their results didn't surprise me at all," Baker said.
Medicare spending up
The researchers assumed that doctors who faced a higher risk of being sued — those in counties that had larger numbers of malpractice cases — would perform more tests and procedures than necessary to protect themselves from lawsuits. With tort reform, which limited damage awards against doctors, the need to practice such "defensive medicine" would decline, the argument goes.
But in comparing Texas counties in which doctors faced a higher risk of lawsuits with counties where the risk was lower, the researchers found no difference in Medicare spending after tort reform and indications that doctors in higher- risk counties did slightly more procedures.
"If tort reform reduces spending, it would have the biggest effect on high-risk counties," Silver said. He noted that those tend to be large and urban.
"This is not a result we expected," said Bernard Black, a co-author and a professor at Northwestern University's Law School and Kellogg School of Management.
Health care spending has increased annually everywhere, the researchers said, including in the states with caps on malpractice payouts — now at 30, counting Texas, said David Hyman, a co-author and professor of law and medicine at the University of Illinois.
But, said Hyman, who worked on health policy for President George W. Bush at the Federal Trade Commission, "we found no evidence that Texas spending went up slower in comparison to all other states and may have had an increase."
The researchers said their study suggests that Medicare payments to doctors in Texas rose 1 to 2 percent faster than the rest of the country, Black said.
Since tort reform, some Texas residents have complained that they cannot find a lawyer to pursue a malpractice case because of the $750,000 cap on payouts for pain, suffering, disfigurement and mental anguish. The limit often makes litigation cost prohibitive, patients and lawyers said. That concern was not raised in the paper, although the researchers said claims of huge malpractice payouts and rampant "frivolous" lawsuits before tort reform are greatly exaggerated by its advocates.
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http://www.statesman.com/news/local/...h-2402096.html
Another in a long string of failed right-wing policies that places profits over people and emotional arguments over science and actual data.
There are significant differences, to be sure, but I'm baffled by the idea that imposing anti-free market strictures on health care costs is problematic but that imposing the same anti-free market strictures upon the liability of health care providers to those who suffer injury is an economic necessity.
statutory caps on liability as a free market measure?
paradoxical for sure.
So we protect the insurance companies from lawsuits... and they continue to raise the cost of healthcare... a win-win for them if you ask me.. so why are we supposed to trust the GOP again when it comes to protecting the middle class?
as always, the Repugs protect and enrich the 1% and UCA behind dishonest pretenses. yawn
repeal that
Tort reform is nothing but an attempt to strike at a large Democratic donor base, trial lawyers. It is no different than the anti-union measures going on across the Midwest. Anyone who thought tort reform was going to seriously affect the price of health care does not understand the field in the slightest.
precisely, the GOP would hurt the middle class to get at the democrats..
Well stated.
I'm waiting for the neocons to bust out the "Well it prevented a lot of small town doctors from closing up shop! It enabled access to rural medicine!" or some other nonsense.
they'll hurt anybody to enrich/protect the 1% and UCA
And obviously, TX trial lawyers have lost a lot business, as was the intention of the legislation.
you mean the insurance companies didn't drop their rates? Shocking
I remember hearing that more doctors moved to TX after tort reform screwed victims and lawyers. If true, and insurance rates (paid by docs) didn't decline, then their moving was a) stupid b)something else going on.
The study in the OP directly debunks that.
More PEOPLE moved to Texas after tort reform period.
This schtick was debunked as more spurious bull by a study designed to evaluate that claim.
Doctors moved to Texas because Texas' population grew, not because of any favorable tort environment.
That isn't why doctors decide to move somewhere.
This law has only the effect of depriving people with legitimate grievances from the court system, and making medmal insurance companies more profitable. Period.
Last edited by RandomGuy; 08-15-2012 at 12:43 PM.
Pretty much.
I used to not quite be so cynical about Republican motives, but the pattern of behavior is VERY clear at this point.
Unions vote Democratic. Destroy them.
Old people and minorities vote Democratic. Make it hard for them to vote.
Trial Laywers donate to Democrats. Destroy them too.
The right wing in this country will stop at nothing to achieve their political ends, and I mean nothing.
This ends justify the means mentality is what gets us torture in the name of freedom and justice, and all sorts of things like what I just mentioned.
you're leaving out:
cancelling CHIP
cutting/cancelling SNAP
$800B off Medicaid (R&R agree)
screwing/impoverishing seniors with useless vouchers to buy high-deductible/high-co-pay for-profit health insurance (transfers taxpayer $Bs intended to pay for Medicare bills to for-profit corporations).
destroy SS by handing it to Wall St crooks.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 08-15-2012 at 01:17 PM.
Tort reform is another typical unconservative phony "solution" that neocons come up with just so they'll have anything different to say from the Democrats, tbh....
It can work at the state level, but not as the only tenet of healthcare reform.... the biggest problems with healthcare today are the HMO's and Big Pharma's monopoly, and tort reform addresses neither of those.... yet neocons will never touch that because of all the Big Pharma crony money they stand to lose, tbh...
Obamacare isn't the ideal solution either, btw.... the healthcare system turned into the current mess because of the HMO Act of 1973, which officially tied healthcare to employment, screwing over the unemployed.... the HMO Act allowed government to start getting involved in healthcare, watering down the free-market compe ion that had kept costs down and made our healthcare system the envy of the world... government mandates got us into this mess, so it's foolish to assume that more government mandates will get us out of it....
I bet those incoming DOCS were money-grubbing, wealthy, over-charging specialists, when what TX (and entire country, esp rural areas, and TX has a BUNCH of those) needs desperately is primary care generalists.
Patient Harm: When An Attorney Won’t Take Your Case
It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of patients a year suffer some type of preventable injury or die while undergoing medical care. For many of these patients or surviving family, a lawsuit is the only hope to recover losses, learn the truth about what happened and ensure the problem is corrected.
But lawyers may have to invest $50,000 or more to pursue a case, and they usually only get paid if they win or settle. The payout is determined largely by economic damages – lost earnings, medical bills and future costs caused by the injury. Those who don’t earn big paychecks – including children, the elderly and stay-at-home-moms – are the least likely to find an attorney, studies show.
A 2013 Emory University School of Law study found that 95 percent of patients who seek an attorney for harm suffered during medical treatment will be shut out of the legal system, primarily for economic reasons. Most attorneys would not accept a case – even one they might win – if the damages likely were less than $250,000.
“You’re basically saying for someone who doesn’t earn a lot of money, ‘It’s OK for a hospital to harm them,’” Ciccotelli said.
Lawyers are the gatekeepers to the law,” Daniels said. “You can have all the rights in the world, but if no one will take your case, then those rights mean absolutely nothing.”
More than 450 attorneys were surveyed for the Emory study, “Uncovering the Silent Victims of the American Medical Liability System,” which found that three out of four medical malpractice attorneys reject more than 90 percent of the cases they screen. The study found:
- About 95 percent of patients who are harmed will find it extremely difficult to get representation.
- Almost no attorney will take a case, even when the chance of winning is 95 percent, if the damages are less than $50,000.
- More than half refuse any case, no matter the likelihood of winning, if the damages are less than $250,000.
The study recommended reforming the system by increasing funding for legal services, so attorneys could be compensated for their time; making defendants who lose a case pay the plaintiff’s attorney fees; or sending malpractice complaints to an administrative system with neutral adjudicators and medical experts so patients wouldn’t need an attorney.
http://www.propublica.org/article/pa...ailynewsletter
American health care, just another wealth-sucking racket that will bankrupt, maim, and/or kill indefensible, over-powered Human-Americans for fun and profit.
got me. I don't follow your posts with scrutinizing attention.
difference is, that isn't two posts upstream, like your most recent sloppy seconds.
TX lawyer pimps his TX tort reform bill at VRWC stink tank
Ten Years of Tort Reform in Texas: A Review
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/ten-years-of-tort-reform-in-texas-a-review
"increased access to health care triggered by HB4"
and decreased medical victims access to the court house
All the medical tort lawyers just reinvented themselves as 18 wheeler and oil field accident attorneys.
There is certainly some truth to that. However, what is still lost on me is the overwhelming support that tort reform has among conservatives. To with lawyers, but, long live insurance companies?
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