The Bush administration and assorted conservatives have been hammering on the nefarious role of trial lawyers in causing the crisis of spiraling health care costs. Here's how Bush sees it: "What's happening all across this country is that lawyers are filing baseless suits against hospitals and doctors ... So doctors end up paying tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars to settle claims, out of court, even when they know they have done nothing wrong." (Quote from The Washington Post.)
Hey, who am I to question Dubya on this one? Doctors good; lawyers bad. Sounds right on to me. Forget the myths about patients who have a scalpel left in their chest cavity after an operation, or who never wake up after an anesthesiologist's funk-up. The real problem is overpaid lawyers who, acting apparently without the consent or involvement of patients, sue doctors for an alleged mistake in treating a hangnail to the tune of $9 million. As a result, health care costs for you and me have skyrocketed in recent years.
To look into the numbers behind this problem, a team of legal scholars studied malpractice claims filed over the last 15 years in Texas, one of the chief "crisis" states labeled by conservatives. Unfortunately, the peer-reviewed study found no change in the number of claims filed or the amount paid in damages during the 15-year period, despite dramatic increases in insurance premiums. Between 1999 and 2002, malpractice insurance premiums in Texas jumped by an average of 135 percent. This doesn't seem to gel with the fact that between 1995 and 2002, the number of claims per physician actually fell, with 80 percent of claims being resolved without any cash coming from doctors or hospitals. One researcher called the malpractice trend in Texas a "sea of calm."
"It's very hard to take the position malpractice is a major factor in the increases in the cost of health care," one of the study's authors told The Washington Post. "The actual cost of malpractice payouts is really quite modest."
Huh? So am I supposed to hate lawyers or insurance companies? Who's the evildoer here?
