A conservative plan for health care reform would include some kind of malpractice reform. Doing so would cut costs for malpractice insurance (which get passed on, of course) and reduce the incentive for overly defensive medical tests. Opinions differ as to how much a difference this one reform would make, but there’s no question it would help (and in some specialties, such as obstetrics, help a lot).
However, the Democrats seem to think that there aren’t enough lawsuits! The Democratic health care bill would allow freelance lawyers to file lawsuits on behalf of Medicare, without obtaining the government’s approval (!), and keep a share of the money if they win.
So let’s not have any more nonsense about how “reform” is going to cut health care costs. We already knew that it won’t (from the CBO analysis, if nothing else), but it is now clear that it’s not even supposed to.
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