Annual jury awards and legal settlements involving doctors amounts to a drop in the bucket in a country that spends $2.3 trillion annually on health care, Amitabh Chandra, another Harvard University economist, recently told Bloomberg News. Chandra estimated the cost of jury awards at about $12 per person in the U.S., or about $3.6 billion. Insurer WellPoint Inc. has also said that liability awards are not whats driving premiums.
And a 2004 report by the Congressional Budget Office said medical malpractice makes up only 2 percent of U.S. health spending. Even significant reductions would do little to curb health-care expenses, it concluded.
A study by Bloomberg also found that the proportion of medical malpractice verdicts among the top jury awards in the U.S. declined over the last 20 years. Of the top 25 awards so far this year, only one was a malpractice case. Moreover, at least 30 states now cap damages in medical lawsuits.
The experience of Texas in capping damage awards is a good example. Contrary to Perrys claims, a recent analysis by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker found that while Texas tort reforms led to a cap on pain-and-suffering awards at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which led to a dramatic decline in lawsuits, McAllen, Texas is one of the most expensive health care markets in the country. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per person enrolled in McAllen, he finds, which is almost twice the national average although the average town resident earns only $12,000 a year. Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.
o.....k. let me rephrase:
economists, the CBO, and Bloomberg cant reliably estimate the impact of malpractice on the practice of defensive medicine. they McAllen, Texas story is enlightening, and I am an avid reader of Gawande, but that doesnt come anywhere close to estimating cost.