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Do Texas malpractice caps work or is this just more hocus pockus?

By Steve Lombardi

After six years of limiting the quality of life damages in Texas for the most severely injured patients Texas is finding out that promises of lower health care costs is just another broken promise by politicians. In 2003 Texas amended its Constitution to allow the legislature to limit the recovery of patients and clients of medical service providers. The legislature responded by shifting the costs of the most serious mistakes to the patient, with the promise to voters that it would lower health care costs for everyone. It hasn't. Six years later the promise has proven false.

Texas claims as a result of this shift in the cost of mistakes that more physicians have moved to Texas. Common sense tells us those physicians who are more likely to move to Texas to take advantage of this cost shifting measure must be looking for a break from the malpractice premium's brought on by their own professional mistakes. Let's face it if a physician needs to move to a state that passes the cost of the worst medical mistakes on to the patient they must be looking for someone else to pay for their worst mistakes. Do Texans really want to attract physicians with the worst skills?

That doesn't sound very attractive to me, but to many the overall promise is more important than reality.

Those in charge say it's too early to see lower costs. How much time will it take? A decade or two, maybe three? How naïve the American public is when it comes to being promised lower health care costs. The promises can't be fulfilled because it's not malpractice lawsuits that are driving up health care costs. The allegation of a liability crisis was a distraction from the real issue: poor management along with too many brick and mortar projects. We want a number one health care system but do we really need the Taj Mahal of care in every community?

He argues that a $250,000 cap on "pain and suffering" damages would improve the national outlook for medical spending, even though things have not turned around in Texas.

"It's still early," he said of the Texas spending climate in the wake of liability caps. "Defensive medicine practices are learned early in a doctor's career. It takes awhile to change that."

A team at the University of Alabama looked into this last year. Their survey of studies related to malpractice insurance, defensive medicine and consumer health insurance premiums looked at 27 states with limits on non-economic damages, including Texas.

No savings

Their conclusion – "Tort reforms have not led to health care cost savings for consumers" – was published in the December issue of Health Sciences Review.

"It's had a really small effect, or else it doesn't seem to change defensive medicine," said Michael Morrisey, a professor of health economics and health insurance and the director of the university's Lister Hill Center for Health Policy.

Look at all the brick and mortar projects in your communities. If you count the projects and the costs to purchase land along with construction costs you'll see where the real cost problem lies. It's not the David Fitzgerald's that are the problem. It's the wasteful spending associated with poor management decisions about the infrastructure. Sooner or later the conclusion leaders will reach is that lawsuits are the least of all concerns driving costs.

Never events are an interesting example of what adds unnecessary cost to health care. If lawyers got paid for filing a lawsuit in the wrong county we too would have a cost problem. If lawyers got paid for two lawsuits when we were forced to file a second lawsuit after losing the first one, we too would have a cost problem. That's what the medical community has been doing for years. If the surgeon operated on the wrong side, he'd close you up, operated on the other side and then get paid for two surgeries. Is that a medical malpractice crisis or a management problem?

Folks, wake up and wise up. Patient lawsuits are being used as a distraction from the real problems that ail our health care system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-OVam0iVUU

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on May 06, 2009 (boomark / email).