Republicans get hammered for supporting special interests but people forget that Democrats also have their special interests, they are called Trial Lawyers! And this is evidence of that! Even the data that people state to suggest that tort reform has no effect on healthcare spending fails to account for defensive medicine practices which account for close to a 100 billion dollars a year. Trial lawyers only publish data that reflect actual malpractice suits and then account for it's percentage of toal healthcare spending which is low. But they don't account for the defensive medical practices in response to these lawsuits, many of which are frivolous as evidenced by the 75% judgements in favor of physicians in malpractice suits. Obama has been unabashedly supportive of trial lawyers and has not acknowledged defensive medicine practices in any real way other than mentioning them in a speech and then providing a vague answer of "Well get back to you on that" which means he has done nothing.
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Once again, I find myself posting to correct an extremely common misperception. There is a group of people out there who believe if a few "common sense" reforms to malpractice laws were enacted that healthcare costs would drop dramatically. This is simply and absolutely false. There is no other way to put it.
The Congressional Budget Office which is as independent a source as one can find has studied this issue thoroughly. It has measured both the direct costs of malpractice (the actual lawsuits) and the indirect costs (defensive medicine practiced as a result of malpractice. They have concluded that
ALL OF THESE COSTS are 1% of the total spending on healthcare in the USA.
CBO Malpractice 1%
Now, even 1% of something as large as the trillion dollar of the healthcare industry in the USA can look pretty large. That's where that $50 billion figure came from in the OP. However, here are two distinct realities.
1. If you totally abolished the right to bring suit for medical malpractice in every single case you'd save 1% of the total amount we spend for healthcare. In other words, you wouldn't notice the difference.
2. You'd destroy the one control on malpractice that exists outside the system of doctors and hospitals. We'd be left with a system where the fox is guarding the henhouse. I don't think too many people would be comfortable with that.
There maybe valid reasons for reforming or changing malpractice laws. But don't come across with these ignorant "pie in the sky" notions that changing these laws is going to reduce healthcare spending in any noticeable way. It won't. And the cost is probably more than it is worth.