Nor do Med-mal torts constitute a significant share of healthcare costs. Even with recent inflation, the average doctor’s premiums are less than 4% of his revenues, and malpractice claims amount to only 1/2 of 1% of total healthcare costs. The average claim is a modest $140,000, and the average settlement is just under $30,000. Less than 5% of awards top one million dollars (and about 3/4 of those are reduced by the courts to an average of $250,000). These averages are already well below most suggested compensation cap limits.
Few injuries even make it into the court system. Only 1 in 8 injuries due to malpractice are ever filed, and more than 3/4 of filed claims are dismissed. The existing legal system, and peoples natural reluctance to sue doctors, winnows out the vast majority of claims already. We can do a better job of ensuring that frivolous suits do not go forward by vetting cases independently before they are filed, and having higher standards for med-mal lawyers. But arbitrary compensation caps will not eliminate nuisance suits; they will only harm those who are the most grievously harmed victims of malpractice.
Some claim that the savings realized by elimination of incentives for physicians to practice ‘defensive medicine’ justify compensation caps. But the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has found no statistically significant difference in per capita healthcare spending between states with and without limits on malpractice awards. Defensive medicine costs are illusory.
To reduce the number and expense of med-mal claims, the most sensible approach is to improve the quality of healthcare, not to arbitrarily limit the payments to people who have suffered terrible injuries. Properly compensating victims according to objective juries’ awards isn’t causing a crisis in malpractice insurance; the worst problem is the breakdown of self-regulation in the medical profession.
It is a very small number of incompetent doctors who cause the public a disproportionate amount of the suffering and expense malpractice causes. Fewer than 5% of doctors are responsible for more than 50% of all med-mal claims, but, of the roughly 5,000 doctors nationally who have paid four or more med-mal awards, fewer than 15% have ever been disciplined by their state boards. Physicians need to more stringently police their own, and force med-mal insurers to rate doctors by their experience and track record, so that good doctors aren’t in the same risk pool with incompetents who are regularly harming their patients, as is now the case.
Article comments
1 - RJ
"Properly compensating victims according to objective juries’ awards"
You were convincing until this point in your post.
"Properly" is a loaded word. It's meaningless in this context.
"Objective juries" is another loaded phrase. Juries regularly award insane amounts of money that are subsequently reduced by the judge.
Let's say I go to the hospital for a bad cut on my pinky toe, and some idiot doctor amputates the WRONG pinky toe. In response, I grab some whiplash-willy lawyer and sue for 500 million dollars. And some jury composed of people too stupid to get out of jury duty finds for the prosecution, and awards me $500,000,000.00. And the judge, unelected and too senile to care, does not step in and change the amount.
Is that fair? Wouldn't a cap on punitive damages (and other miscellaneous damages) prevent such a thing from happening?
2 - mike
You need to read "Medical Malpractice and the American Jury". The idea of run-away juries is simply apocryphal. And capping punative damages isn't what the GOP is gunning for; they want to cap all 'non-economic' damages. That includes pain and suffering and future costs. That's just plain cruel.
3 - Eric Olsen
very interesting, important and well-written Michael, thanks and welcome! I don't know what the answer is, but I do know my wife's very excellent ob/gyn was literally driven from the state of Ohio by exorbitant malpractice insurance rates simply because he was an ob/gyn, not because of anything on his record - he showed us some of the paperwork. Something has to be done, and "improving healthcare" is a bit amorphous.
4 - Dave Nalle
>>The cost of caring for a child paralyzed or otherwise disabled for a lifetime by malpractice can run into the millions, yet these so-called ‘reformers’ want to cap all awards at a low level, regardless of the facts of the case.<<
This statement is untrue. As far as I am aware, every cap which has been passed applies only to punitive damages only and not to real damages. So if you face a lifetime of medical expenses for a disabled child you get that money first and the cap applies to the money added on to that money solely to punish the doctor or hospital.
This appears to be a common misunderstanding of tort reform which you are perpetuating. A cap on actual damages would indeed be totally unfair, but a cap on punitive damages only really harms lawyers who hope to take advantage of vengeful or ignorant juries and run up outrageous punitive damages when going after a deep-pocketed client.
Dave
5 - RJ
Er, just to clarify...
In my comment above, I meant "plaintiff" not "prosecution"...