Medical Malpractice "Reform"

The Washington Post today tells us of a crisis in insurance costs for OB/GYN's in Maryland. After endorsing a reduction of the "damages cap" for "pain and suffering" from $635,000 down to $500,000, the Post writes:

A somewhat tighter limit on awards for "pain and suffering" strikes us as reasonable but inadequate; it needs to be coupled with better provisions for protecting patients from negligent doctors and improving medical care. The goal, as we've said before, should be to protect victims of doctor error as well as victims of unfair lawsuits. That might mean tougher discipline for repeat-offender doctors, better disclosure of errors in care and closer scrutiny of hospitals to identify patterns of errors. Doctors might squirm at that, and trial lawyers might squirm at lower caps on "pain and suffering" awards. But without some compromises, Maryland's health care system may be heading for a fall.

Um... I doubt many lawyers will "squirm" over the difference between a $635,000 damages cap and a $500,000 cap, because any case worth litigating under one cap will remain worth litigating under the other. The person who "squirms" as a result of such a cap is the child who is told to accept $500,000 as compensation for the "pain and suffering" from a lifetime of disability. You never see so-called "tort reform" advocates putting a human face on the babies supposedly "overcompensated" for their very real injuries - a human face would interfere with the charade.

What the Post doesn't ask is whether part of the reason for high insurance costs comes from bad practices by the insurance companies themselves. Irresponsible financial practices which they are passing along to doctors in the form of higher premiums. The Post doesn't even stop to wonder if jury verdicts are increasing, or if there are so many verdicts at the level of the "cap" that a 21% decrease will have any significant impact on premiums. After all, even with "pain and suffering" capped at $500,000, for the most severe cases of malpractice the award for economic expenses - a lifetime of medical care, educational support, attendant care, medical equipment, and dependence - will be ten or twenty times that amount, perhaps more.

Yes, obviously there should be some attention paid to avoiding incidents of malpractice, to weeding out "bad doctors", and to otherwise protecting patients. But there are few groups which lobby on behalf of injured patients, and insurance companies have scores of full-time lobbyists working to limit their recoveries. So it might be reasonable for a legislature to consider patient-centered improvements, but it is more realistic to expect it to cater to the insurance industry.

While it is a competitor, perhaps the Post's unnamed editorialist would benefit from reading Bob Herbert's recent column, in which he took a peek behind the curtain of malpractice "reform"....