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And for those who support (only) Tort Reform is the way to go and reduce costs, tell me, what kind of savings are we looking at... numbers please.
This whole "tort reform" thing is a red herring anyway. I haven't been to a doctor or hospital in 15 years that didn't shove a "mediation agreement" in front of me to sign. Now, I don't personally sign them, because I'm not legally obliged to waive my rights. But I suspect that 99% or better, do sign them, so most complaints against doctors end up resolved in mediation and never see the inside of a courtroom.
Do a little research. Courts are very good at throwing out frivolous lawsuits. The far greater problem lies in their throwing out as well many cases that truly are based upon actual injury resulting from actual error. It would seem to me that, in your mind, those lawyers who work to DEPRIVE injured litigants of the compensation they are entitled to under law rank more highly than lawyers who work to ASSURE that injured litigants receive the compensation that they are entitled to under law. Why IS that???
Meanwhile, however refined their bedside manner might be, doctors do not have any excuse for loading up on excessive tests and referrals over the excuse of fear of malpractice. This is a sham. If any doctor has ever been found guilty of malpractice for having not performed a test or made a referral that was not called for to begin with, you'll have to dig up the record of it for me.
i am no lawyer but i would assume that all of the EMTALA lawsuits would "encourage" physicians to perform all kinds of tests just to cover themselves. it would a subjective call on what tests are needed in each specific instance since these patients are being admitted to a hospital undiagnosed.
the real question is can we afford this health care?
one of the bewildering ironies of the health-care debate is that President Obama claims to be attacking the status quo when he's actually embracing it. Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That's the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. While denouncing skyrocketing health spending, he would increase it by extending government health insurance to millions more Americans. (newsweek)
should the people of the united states be allowed to vote on whether they want this health care bill or not?
The people just voted and elected a new president. Health care was one of the issues that was discussed during the campaign. To have a referendum now would be silly and wasteful.
what is wasteful is government spending on top of government spending, with no clear reform or spending controls in place.
in we were really talking reform, we wouldn't be arguing about how to "pay for" the $1 trillion or so of costs over a decade of Obama's "reform." Congress wouldn't create new benefits until it had DISCIPLINED the old. We'd be debating how to trim the $10 trillion, as estimated by the CBO, that Medicare and Medicaid will spend over the next decade, without impairing Americans' health. We'd use Medicare as a vehicle of change. Accounting for more than one-fifth of all health spending, its costs per beneficiary, now about $12,000, rose at an average annual rate of 8.5 percent a year from 1970 to 2007. (True, that's lower than the private insurers' rate of 9.7 percent. But the gap may partly reflect cost-shifting to private payers. When Medicare restrains reimbursement rates, hospitals and doctors raise charges to private insurers.)
Medicare is so big that shifts in its practices spread to the rest of the delivery system. But changing Medicare, and through it one-sixth of the U.S. economy, requires more than a few demonstration projects of "comparative outcomes" research or economic incentives. What's needed is a fundamental restructuring. Fee-for-service medicine—Medicare's dominant form of payment—is outmoded. The more doctors and hospitals do, the more they get paid. This promotes fragmentation and the overuse of services.
We should move toward coordinated care networks that take responsibility for their members' medical needs in return for fixed annual payments (called "capitation"). One approach is through vouchers; Medicare recipients would receive a fixed amount and shop for networks with the lowest cost and highest quality. Alternatively, government could shift its reimbursement of hospitals and doctors to "capitation" payments. Limited dollars would, in theory, force improvements in efficiency and effective care.
instead, we are just adding another layer of undisciplined spending on top of our already troubled health care system.
the real question is can we afford this health care?
1-Yes, we can afford a reform, and we must. There's a lot of wasteful spending today costing this country and its people dearly. To think otherwise is short sighted and fiscally naive. You're worried about $100B/year in costs, while ignoring over $200B/year in waste that happens as a result of emergency rooms being used as regular clinics.
2-So, instead of wasting time, fear mongering and spewing lies, it would be prudent to sit down together, and work on a solution that works for everybody. Mudslinging is a child's play, and this country deserves better.
3-Now, one solution people like you and the GOP cling onto is, tort reform. I asked a question and it will likely not be answered. But I can certainly try again: how much will it save (give me numbers), and is it worth worrying about given the direction and its costs of health care system in America as projected over next ten years without a reform in place?
4-What is your proposal to save this country's medicare program from disaster in about a decade from now, if nothing were done about it? Do you cut costs, or do you keep spending?
3-Now, one solution people like you and the GOP cling onto is, tort reform. I asked a question and it will likely not be answered. But I can certainly try again: how much will it save (give me numbers), and is it worth worrying about given the direction and its costs of health care system in America as projected over next ten years without a reform in place?
[President George W. Bush] holds out the prospect of major cost savings if Congress will pass a law limiting what injured patients can collect in lawsuits. He wants a cap of $250,000 on any damages for “pain and suffering” and other non-economic damages. His administration projects savings to the entire economy of between $60 billion and $108 billion per year in health-care costs, including $28 billion or more to federal taxpayers.
But both the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office criticize the 1996 study the Bush administration uses as their main support. These nonpartisan agencies suggest savings – if any – would be relatively small.
Analysis
. . .
[The President's] claims rest mainly on a single 1996 study by two Stanford economists who said caps on damage awards could hold down overall medical costs by 5% to 9%. They studied heart patients who were hospitalized, compared costs in states with and without limits on malpractice lawsuits, and then projected their findings to the entire health-care system.
But both the GAO and the CBO now question their sweeping conclusion. When the CBO attempted to duplicate the Stanford economists’ methods for other types of ailments they found found “no evidence that restrictions on tort liability reduce medical spending.”
“In short, the evidence available to date does not make a strong case that restricting malpractice liability would have a significant effect, either positive or negative, on economic efficiency, ” the CBO said.
. . .
However, a fact not mentioned in the Bush HHS paper is that several other studies of defensive medicine failed to find anywhere near such large costs. A 1990 study by the Harvard University School of Public Health “did not find a strong relationship between the threat of litigation and medical costs,” CBO said. And a 1999 study in the Journal of Health Economics found only tiny savings – less than three-tenths of one percent – when studying the cost of Caesarian sections in states with limits on lawsuits, compared to states without limits.
Finally, a 1994 study by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment found some added costs (under $54 million total) due to defensive radiology in children with head injuries and defensive Caesarian sections in certain women with difficult pregnancies. But the OTA study concluded: “it is impossible in the final analysis to draw any conclusions about the overall extent or cost of defensive medicine.”
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Why is it alright for states to have ballot questions but not the federal government to do so?
Probably for the same reason that the federal government doesn't issue marriage licenses.
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