A broken malpractice system

Malpractice is on everyone’s mind these days. In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama voiced his support for malpractice reform, and his proposed budget for 2012 provides for $250 million in federal funds to help states rewrite their malpractice laws. House members are contemplating a bill to impose caps on the financial damages awarded to patients, restrict attorney fees and impose a statute of limitations on malpractice claims.

The need to reform the medical malpractice system is unquestionable: The system has spiraled out of control. The threat of litigation has caused doctors’ insurance premiums to skyrocket. In many parts of the country, specialists pay well over $150,000 a year for malpractice coverage. Some stop providing high-risk services in order to bring down premiums (an obstetrician-gynecologist, for example, may choose not to deliver babies); others move their practices to areas where insurance is more affordable or retire from medicine altogether.

To protect themselves against liability, physicians sometimes order tests and do procedures not because they’re necessary but as a safeguard against possible malpractice claims. This type of “defensive medicine” does little to benefit patients and drives up the costs of medical liability even further. According to a 2010 study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, the overall costs of malpractice run roughly $55 billion a year.