Joanne Doroshow from the Center for Justice and Democracy writes a blog post for AOL the Huffington Post arguing that medical malpractice tort reform will increase the national debt.
A few weeks ago, I observed that no one was saying anything new on the subject of tort reform. There is an editorial a week on tort reform but nothing new. The AMA is relentless in what has to be a systematic effort to push new malpractice award limits and other curbs on malpractice lawsuits.
Ms. Doroshow has something new to say. Fundamentally, Ms. Doroshow contends that limitation on malpractice lawsuits will increase our national deficit because hospitals and doctors will lose the incentive to provide the safeguards necessary to protect patients. From this, the increase in injuries and deaths from medical malpractice will increase the societal burden of supporting patients who are brain-damaged, mutilated, or rendered paraplegic. She explains her thinking further:
CBO notes that one study finds such tort restrictions would lead to a .2 percent increase in the nation’s overall death rate. If true, that would be more than 4,000 additional Americans killed every year by medical malpractice, and that’s on top of the hundreds of thousands of additional patients who survive their injuries. How could this possibly be an acceptable trade-off?
It can’t be. Like I said last week, we get no bang for our buck on malpractice reform. In exchange for our end run around the 7th Amendment and for trampling on the rights of people that need justice, we get nothing tangible back economically. Continue reading