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The Economist Calls Health Courts A Sensible Idea Scalpel, Scissors, Lawyer
The Economist, December 14, 2005 America’s current system of medical justice serves both doctors and patients poorly, relates The Economist in a recent article. “America health care,” they write, “is bedeviled by two problems that lawsuits do nothing to heal. First, health care costs too much. . . . Second, some 46m Americans languish uninsured.” And in truth, our current system only makes these problems worse.
Contributing to American health care’s high costs is the fact that our current system of medical justice encourages doctors to practice defensive medicine. The article cites one doctor who “guesses that 12% to 15% of the procedures he bills are unnecessary.” Access to care is limited by our current system, not only because it makes health care more expensive, but also because it encourages doctors to relocate from states where malpractice insurance rates are high to ones where they are lower. Pennsylvania, The Economist notes, saw its pool of general surgeons reduced by a third between 1995 and 2002. Moreover, the system itself is expensive, inefficient, random, and too often inaccessible and unfair to actual victims of medical mistakes. “Those patients with small claims often cannot find a lawyer to represent them, while those who win find their lawyers have swallowed half the payout from the doctors.”
“So what can be done?,” asks The Economist. A “sensible idea,” they go on to argue, is that proposed by Common Good: to have medical malpractice disputes handled by special health courts. The Economist explains:
"Cases could be decided by judges who heard only medical cases, rather than by juries. The court could call its own neutral expert witnesses, rather than relying solely on the partisans hired by the litigants. Non-economic compensation for pain and suffering would be according to a fixed schedule—so much for an arm, etc—rather than by having jurors pluck a number out of the air.
The idea is partly modeled on the specialist courts that deal with other complex technical issues, such as patent disputes and bankruptcy. It ought to make the system less capricious."
Legislation to create pilot health courts in several states has been introduced in both houses of Congress, with hearings expected early next year.
Click to read the article. (Available to subscribers only)
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