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Hawke[_3_]

wrote:
On Jan 28, 9:20 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
wrote in message

...
On Jan 28, 9:42 am, "John R. Carroll" wrote:

When you want to reduce the cost of something, you go where the money is,
not where it isn't.
--
John R. Carroll
I think it is more like " When you want to reduce the cost of
something, you go to all the places the money is. "
Dan
Not speaking for John, but it seems to me that his point is that you set
your priorities based on where there can be the largest savings. Tort reform
will be a big disappointment to many people, should it happen, when they
find out that the total awards in malpractice suits (and estimated
out-of-court settlements) amounts to roughly 0.5% of our health bill. And
that's from a study done by the insurance industry itself. They have every
incentive to inflate the number.

Substantially larger is the cost of malpractice *insurance*. But that amount
is still small. Much larger than either is the cost of "defensive medicine"
that supposedly is the result of all of the lawsuits. Some estimates(by
Price Waterhouse, for example) put it as high as 12% of our total health
care costs. Charles Krauthammer, not known for making cautious claims g,
says it's something over 20%. But no serious or independent study ranks it
that high.

The thing is, the "defensive medicine" issue is not what it appears to be,
either. The evidence is self-reported and those doing the surveys say there
is a strong reason to believe that doctors overrepresent the numbers by a
large amount. Also, there's little evidence that it will be reduced by
"reforming" tort laws, for a variety of reasons. In some cases, insurers
expect more misdiagnoses, and thus more lawsuits that would result from
shielding doctors from large liabilities.

So tort reform is a good idea, for psychological reasons if nothing else,
but you won't find much money there to be saved. We have a 50% problem --
our rates are 50% higher than most of the developed world, with similar
results -- and saving 10% or so, if that really is possible, isn't going to
heal the wound.

We need to look under some other rocks for the money.

--
Ed Huntress

Agreed. But my point is that if you are trying to save money, you do
everything that will save money. You don't say that is only a quarter
on the floor, I will not bother to pick it up.

Passing Tort Reform might be only good for psychological reasons, but
it would help.

We need to look under all the rocks for the money.

Dan

First off, you don't do everything you can to save money you do what
makes sense. You don't waste time on things that bring minimal gains.
You go for the things that make real differences. Do you pick up pennies
when you find them? No, you don't because it's not worth the bother.
Same with saving in health care. You make the major structural changes
and you save a lot of money. There is no sense in saving a pittance when
changing the big things saves a lot of dough.

But everyone knows that already. Talking about things like tort reform
is just a diversionary tactic by the anti reform side. They know the
savings there isn't anything. But it means they aren't talking about
what has to be done, which is switching from what we have to a universal
system. Only when that happens will the major savings be made. Until you
do that all you are doing is fiddling around the edges. But when your
goal is to impede progress toward achieving the goal of a national
health care system you take every opportunity to change the subject to
things that are irrelevant. That is all the talk about tort reform is,
it's a way to avoid addressing the real problem.

Hawke