The Health Care Reform Address Thread

[JoeRedskin]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

So let's get to it:

What are they doing?: Trying to reduce malpractice costs.

Why?: Because doctors pay out the nose to keep themselves covered, all because juries keep awarding people multi-millions. That cost of malp insurance drives up the cost of doc appointments as docs pass the cost on.

How will they do it? Unknown at this point, no specifics are available, but ultimately the only way to substantively reduce this cost is to somehow reduce the amount of money awarded to victims of malpractice.

How will it help? Over time malpractice insurance premiums will drop for docs. They'll stop raising prices for their appointments.

Again, I will raise my idea again - mainly b/c I think it's f'ing brilliant, but here it is actually relevant.

Eliminate malpractice liability as a tort action. Instead establish a Medical Injury Compensation Commission similar to Workers Comp. Patients no longer need to show negligence caused their injury, instead they just need to demonstrate an injury to receive compensation. As in Workers Comp, recoveries are based specific losses, temporary/permanent, and partial/permanent disability.

Instead of paying high malpractice insurance costs, all hospitals, doctors and medical professionals pay MIC insurance (just like all employers pay Worker's Comp insurance) - it won't be cheap, but it should be less than current malpractice. Plus, it has the added benefit of spreading costs of all professions amongst all practitioners (instead of huge premiums for Obstetrics and ortho's). Malpractice litigation is all but eliminated and replaced with MICC litigation which, like Workers Comp, follows a more formulaic approach.

Further, this could be done separate from the current bill and, in fact, could be drafted as a companion to it so to show how the two would work in conjunction.