Medicine Reform NOT Legal Reform Is Needed To Lower Healthcare Costs And To Protect Patients’ Rights

There is presently a large push to have medical malpractice caps on the earnings that a victim can obtain for noneconomic damages.  These are damages for pain and suffering, both past and future, which account for the bulk of medical malpractice lawsuits.  This is, after all, what a personal injury lawsuit is meant to compensate a victim for—the injuries and harm caused to them.

The pushes to limit the medical malpractice awards that a victim can obtain are coming from both federal pushes with the new healthcare acts, to the states creating their own.  Recently some states have had theirs struck down, such as Wisconsin.  But more and more push has been here to limit the pain and suffering under the premise that it is causing healthcare costs to go up.

The reasoning?  Because greedy lawyers and nasty victims are just abusing the system to get more money in their pockets at the expense of the healthcare system.

The logic?  That’s not true at all!

Only 2.4% of all healthcare costs go to medical malpractice lawsuits.  Of that, the cost of defense (the doctor’s lawyers) account for about 1.5%.  That means actual victims and their lawsuits are only taking approximately 1% of all healthcare costs.

That is barely greedy or pushing the system.

So why are we using this as a cause to stop medical malpractice?  Why should victim’s who lose all of their limbs—like the Wisconsin case that ended up finding medical malpractice caps are unconstitutional—have to suffer.  They didn’t do anything wrong.

It should be medicine that gets reformed, not the law.  It should be healthcare providers and doctors who need to be more careful and take care of us.  We shouldn’t be punished for their mistakes and mistreatment of us causing medical malpractice.