I mean, malpractice suits suck, but there's a reason why economists work with data and not anecdotes.
Let's take a look at a paper that I'm sure will have at least one author that you have heard of:
Mello MM, Chandra A, Gawande AA, Studdert DM. National costs of the medical liability system. Health Aff (Millwood). 2010 Sep;29(9):1569-77. doi:
10.1377/hlthaff.2009.0807. (
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/29/9/1569.full)
So note that this does include their estimates of defensive medicine costs, which they do acknowledge is incredibly difficult to estimate. But it isn't like the authors are totally unfamiliar with the concept--for example, Atul Gawande, the third author, has written about his and colleagues' experiences being sued (
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/14/051114fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all) in the popular press.
So $56 billion dollars. That's a lot. And the bulk of the costs are defensive medicine costs, which are high. But right now, the total cost of malpractice is less than how much the U.S. spends on Medicare Part D (
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/12-01-MedicarePartD.pdf). Even if this is underestimated by a factor of five, it's not the end of the world.
Anecdotes vs. Evidence-based research. There's a reason one is more emotionally powerful than the other, but what profession are you planning on entering?