And yet malpractice reform isn't even in the conversation. From Health and Human Services 2002:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/daltcp/reports/litrefm.htm
Quote:
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Americans spend proportionately far more per person on the costs of litigation than any other country in the world. The excesses of the litigation system are an important contributor to "defensive medicine"--the costly use of medical treatments by a doctor for the purpose of avoiding litigation. As multimillion-dollar jury awards have become more commonplace in recent years, these problems have reached crisis proportions. Insurance premiums for malpractice are increasing at a rapid rate, particularly in states that have not taken steps to make their legal systems function more predictably and effectively. Doctors are facing much higher costs of insurance, and some cannot obtain insurance despite having never lost a single malpractice judgment or even faced a claim.
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How can it not even be mentioned by the folks advocating this mess? We are supposed to embrace a government option because of the savings. We can differ on the actual impact malpractice has on costs, the range is Satan from the insurance folks to negligible and worth it to protect the public according to the ambulance chasers. People need a process to address malpractice and protect the public, but it's being treated like medical Lotto.
We could be allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines, private insurance pools for high-risk groups, individual medical accounts to go with medical liability-tort reform.
None of this is new, much of it has been the subject of government study. It's freaking irritating to listen to accusations that if you don't want this radical muckup, you don't want changes or reform. That you are spitting out corporate lackey, talk radio, faux news propaganda. That you just want Obama to fail because of his complexion.
We had a very good system 30 years ago. While it's not practical or possible to roll things back to the late '70's, you can certainly attempt to mitigate the biggest negatives without blowing up the system and handing control to people who have a horrible record managing such things.