I provided plenty of data that you chose to ignore. Day-to-day accounts of dozens of physicians IS data. The vast discrepancy of per-capital healthcare costs between Europe and the USA that can be easily explained by our vastly different civil legal systems IS data. It is YOU who have failed to provide any evidence to buttress your failing argument. I think what you are trying to ask for is a study that performs a comparative analysis of medical expenditure prior to significant tort reform and after significant tort reform. If this is what you are asking, then you are giving me a Catch-22: You will not support the passage of common-sense civil law reform (even though there are no conceivable negative outcomes from such laws), and you simultaneously scoff that I have provided no studies that demonstrate tort reform efficacy. If you want these studies so badly, then let's pass common-sense civil law reform that forces lawyers to prove that a patient's adverse outcome is due to an individual doctor's (or group of doctors') failure to adhere to the standard of care before a case can be brought to trial. Why in the world would anyone be against this? Our healthcare results (e.g. life-expectancy, rates of successful treatment of a multitude of ailments, etc) are incredibly similar (and sometimes superior) to those of most of Europe. Hence, your above statement is incorrect. "Leap in logic?" Are you kidding me? If I am no longer forced to pay X dollars for something, then I will have X dollars in savings. How is this concept a "leap in logic?" To me (and everyone else), that's as simple as logic gets.
This is what much of Europe has, and this is most likely why their healthcare costs are so much lower than ours. While I wouldn't mind if the USA adopted this reform to our broken civil legal system, my solution is much simpler: I think that the civil legal system should be modeled after the criminal legal system, which assumes innocence of the plaintiff until they are proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I see no reason why, in a medical malpractice case, a plaintiff and his/her lawyer shouldn't have the task of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that a poor outcome that a patient experienced is the direct result of a doctor failing to adhere to the standard of care. In fact, this shouldn't be limiting to only medical malpractice cases: All civil suits should require this level of proof. I do agree that making the loser pay would be a huge step forward in achieving progress in fixing this messed up system.
I meant to say that our criminal legal system assumes the innocence of the defendant until they are proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, not the plaintiff.
You are doing a great job at ignoring everything that I have written. How about I'll post something new when you respond to the data that I have posted already.
Anecdote is not the singular of data. Post data. You say things like if you lower liability then costs go down but I showed you that wasn't true with research which you of course simply rejected. I linked to a book that explains it in detail and you say it was written by a self-serving lawyer. But what you haven't done is post one piece of evidence of your position. Look here: http://www.citizen.org/documents/npdb-report-2012.pdf So...................... what do you got.
If you think second hand stories constitute data you probably are not worth the effort necessary for education. And if I recall correctly our average life expectancy rates fairly low in the developed world, but if you have any actual "data" feel free to post it.
Can you actually supply a list of countries in Europe where the loser pays court costs in a jury trial system. Here is the CIA list for life expectancy by country. Unitd States comes in at the 42 position. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html
Full Definition of DATA 1 *) factual information (as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation <the data is plentiful and easily available — H. A. Gleason, Jr.> <comprehensive data on economic growth have been published — N. H. Jacoby>
Why? Because laws are written by lawyers, primarily for the benefit of lawyers. Lawyers have no 'First, do no harm.' mandate. They will not willingly reform laws to make lawsuits more difficult to bring. A lawsuit is just like a casino game, and lawyers are the house. No matter if you win, or if you lose, the house ALWAYS wins.
It is not anecdote when I have spoken to dozens upon dozens of physicians who share the exact same experiences as me. That's called a survey and that is data. I would love to post data that compares the cost of healthcare with out current broken legal system to the healthcare costs of a civil legal system with common sense reforms, as I have previously mentioned. However, the trial lawyer lobbying groups are preventing such reforms from taking place due to their greed. Take your own advice. Post data that proves that common-sense civil law reform wouldn't save a significant amount of money. You have failed to do so thus far. No you didn't. You gave me biased nonsense, not a study. It was written by a self-serving lawyer: That's a fact. Where in the book did he explain why common sense civil law reforms wouldn't work? I posted far more evidence than you have explaining your position against common sense civil law reforms. Heck, you haven't even explained why you disagree with the logic of common sense civil law reforms (e.g. Why is it a bad thing to force the ambulance chaser attorney to explain how a specific doctor failed to adhere to the standard of care before a lawsuit can be filed against that doctor? Why in the world would you, or anyone, be against this?) This is irrelevant information. It does not matter that malpractice payments have decreased (they are still substantial according to your paper). What matters is that doctors can be sued for ANY bad outcome regardless of any wrongdoing or failure to adhere to the standard of care. This creates a rational fear of being sued, which leads to unnecessary testing and a low threshold for hospital admissions, which directly leads to higher medical costs compared to any other country in the world by huge margins.
Second hand stories? What are you taking about? How many times do I have to explain that I am a practicing physician with FIRST-HAND experience of dealing with the nightmare of how the civil legal system negatively affects healthcare? Again, I have spoken to dozens of physicians who, like me, have FIRST-HAND experience with this issue. If anyone here has "second hand stories" it's you. As usual, you are incorrect. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html As you can see, the USA has a life expectancy of nearly 80 years for both men and women, which is not significantly lower than any other major country, which is quite a testament to the healthcare system of this country considering we have a much more diverse population than any of the countries with higher rating and we are dealing with an illegal alien population of between 11-15 million who are mostly from countries with far lower life-expectancy rates.
If you actually looked beyond the ranking number, you will see that the USA has a statistically identical life expectancy rate to most countries in Europe. If you do not include our 11-15 million illegal aliens and the thousands of people killed by gangs that are unique to this country, then I would wager dollars to donuts that our life-expectancy would be higher than that of most of Europe.
If you consider that we spend more on healthcare than any other nation achieving a ranking in life expectancy of 42 in the world doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to me.
Sure, and if you exclude all those that die young we would rank even better. The fact is that considering what we spend for healthcare in this country the results are mediocre at best.
First thing to do is to eliminate unconstitutional age discrimination. Right now only people older than 65 have guaranteed access to government managed Health Care system.
Well then, let's make common-sense reforms of the civil legal system ASAP and we wouldn't be spending nearly as much money on healthcare. Are you on board with this then?
I'm not saying that. I'm saying that if you exclude the thousands upon thousands of gang related deaths (which are unique to America and have nothing to do with the quality of healthcare) and the 11-15 million illegal aliens (who have an inherently lower life expectancy), then there is no doubt that the life expectancy in the USA would suppose that of most European countries. Again, the reason why we spend so much is because our civil legal system is broken and doctors are forced to order a plethora of unnecessary tests out of fear and admit patients to hospitals that would not be hospitalized in other countries.
I meant to say that there is no doubt that that life expectancy would surpass that of most European countries.
Depends on your definition of " common sense reforms " I would reform the tort system to eliminate jury trials and use expert panels instead. If your idea is to make loser pay then you are essentially eliminating all class action lawsuits which essentially eliminates any corporate liability for wrongdoing since the corporations will just run costs up to the point that no one could risk a lawsuit. And capping damages for pain and suffering would basically have the same result. And note that no one yet has actually provided any solid data on actual cost impact of lawsuits on overall medical cost in the United States.
Doctors order unnecessary test because the testing facilities are owned by consortiums of doctors and because it is actually safer for the patients to eliminate even tiny probabilities if there is no obvious cost to the doctor or the patient. There is no cost to doctors for ordering tests so even if tort reform happened assuming unnecessary testing would be eliminated is a major assumption.
Medicare covers about 40% of health care services but at about only 20% of the over all health care cost. If you want to lower health care cost, join the rest of the industrialized world, and make Medicare coverage available to all.
http://news.yahoo.com/10-169-blood-test-everything-170003116.html I suggest government oversight and price controls.
That would be a magnificent start. I would add that, before a lawsuit against a physician can go forward, the plaintiff's lawyer must also provide two certificates of merit (e.g. a document signed by another physician of the same specialty of the defendant stating that the case has merit to proceed). The first physician signing the certificate of merit must first review the case and explain in detail why the case has merit. Then, a second physician, of the same specialty as the defendant, has to also review the chart and cosign the certificate after reading the first physician's statement (if he concurs with the first physician), in order to validate this statement. Pain and suffering is one of the biggest scam lawyers use. Capping this nonsense would be an acceptable first step to true reform of our broken system. Again, you are giving me a Catch 22: People like you are against meaningful civil legal system to take place. Hence, I cannot possibly provide data of medical costs in such a system. All I can do is provide medical costs of European countries (that have a vastly different civil legal system), with similar populations and disease prevalence as the USA, and compare them to the USA; I have done this already.
LOL!! You clearly have no understanding of how medicine is practiced in this country. You are arguing on a subject of which you have no knowledge, and you are showing your ignorance. I am a physician ordering diagnostic testing for patients, and your version of reality could not be any further from the truth.
