The Health Care Reform Address Thread

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by FRPLG

Here's my question...and it's a lazy one I'll admit. I attended our local town hall meeting which was of course dominated by discussion on health care. It was a very civil affair with probably a good 70-30 split against the current debated HR3200. I live in a heavily conservative area so this is to be expected. Now there were a good amount of the "we simply don't like this crowd". Mostly base on philosophical grounds. The other side was better "prepared". They had answers for everything it seemed but a lot of it sounded like spin to me personally. One woman claimed that her husband had been studying the entire industry for years and that medical-malpractice as it stands now causes only a 2-3% increase in costs. This sounded baffling to me but I admittedly have no reason other than it seems like doctors say that isn't true. So what is the deal? What affect does malpractice judgement in general have on the system? Is it only 2-3% or is it more or even far more? Anyone have anything that answers this conclusively?

I can tell you that at our healthsystem malpractice premiums account for about 3-4% of our total expenses.

Malpractice premiums are increasing at about 15% per year.

So while the rest of our costs increase at about 6% per year, because malpractice is going up by 15%, it is responsible for a half of a percentage increase in overall expense growth within healthcare.

Reducing overall healthcare expenses across the nation by a tenth of a percent would cut the deficit drastically. This could be accomplished by getting malpractice premiums to increase by only 12% instead of by 15%.

Small changes in expense growth accumulate to massive savings across the system, at least when compared to the projected deficit.