How do people like Dick Durbin get elected?
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) falsely quoted the CBO, saying malpractice reform will kill Americans. How stupid does he think we are?
From the SRCC:
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): “That Means That If The Hatch Proposal Were Applied Nationwide, According To The C.B.O. And This Cited Study, 4,853 More Americans Would Be Killed Each Year By Medical Malpractice. This Is C.B.O. Report. Or More Than 48,000 Americans Over A Ten-Year Period Of Time That The C.B.O. Examines. So If You Accept Their Projection On The Savings For Medical Malpractice Reform Asked For By Senator Hatch, You Cannot Escape The Fact That They Say, Yes, You’ll Save Money But More Americans Will Die.” (Sen. Dick Durbin, Floor Remarks, 12/2/09)
CBO: Three Studies “Concluded That Tort Reform Generated No Significant Adverse Outcomes For Patients’ Health.”
CBO: “There Is Less Evidence About The Effects Of Tort Reform On People’s Health, However, Than About Its Effects On Health Care Spending – Because Many Studies Of Malpractice Costs Do Not Examine Health Outcomes. … Kessler And Mcclellan (1996 And 2002) And Sloan And Shadle (2009) Concluded That Tort Reform Generated No Significant Adverse Outcomes For Patients’ Health.” “There is less evidence about the effects of tort reform on people’s health, however, than about its effects on health care spending – because many studies of malpractice costs do not examine health outcomes. Some recent research has found that tort reform may adversely affect such outcomes, but other studies have concluded otherwise. Lakdawalla and Seabury (2009) found that a 10 percent reduction in costs related to medical malpractice liability would increase the nation’s overall mortality rate by 0.2 percent. However, Kessler and McClellan (1996 and 2002) and Sloan and Shadle (2009) concluded that tort reform generated no significant adverse outcomes for patients’ health.” (Douglas Elmendorf, CBO Director, Letter To Sen. Hatch, P.5 10/9/09)
[...] the original: Whopper of the Day – Dick Durbin: CBO Says Malpractice Reform Will … By admin | category: medical malpractice | tags: applied, applied-nationwide, cited, [...]
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I don’t know whether tort reform would kill Americans, but malpractice does.
What we actually need is malpractice reform to reduce malpractice in the first place.
National Practitioner Data Bank data shows that in most states only about two percent of physicians have been responsible for over half of all the money paid out for malpractice since 1990. NPDB data also shows that quite often these two percent have multiple payments in their records but no action by state licensing boards to revoke their licenses or restrict their practices. Similarly, most often no action has been taken by hospital peer reviewers to revoke or restrict their clinical privileges. So the “repeat offenders” continue commit more malpractice.
To have true malpractice reform the licensing boards and peer reviewers need to get serious about protecting the public from physicians with a pattern of malpractice.
It is also worth noting that there are fewer than 20,000 malpractice payments each year for all causes although the Institute of Medicine estimates that there are about 100,000 deaths each year from malpractice. Other sources double that number. Only about 28 percent of malpractice payments involve patient death. Thus we can estimate that at most only about 3 to 6 percent of all malpractice victims receive any malpractice payment.
The real problem isn’t malpractice payments. To save money — and more importantly, to save lives and prevent injury — we need true malpractice reform that reduces malpractice itself. We need to stop treating the symptoms — malpractice payments — and instead treat the disease — malpractice.
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