Dispelling Malpractice Myths William R. Brody
The Washington Post, November 14, 2004 William R. Brody, president of Johns Hopkins University and a new Common Good Advisory Board member, takes aim at medical malpractice myths in a Washington Post op-ed.
After detailing the randomness of medical liability compensation under the current system, Brody concludes that "[a] few caps on liability costs aren't going to solve the problem. It's time we begin a comprehensive reform of the medical justice system."
Brody lists and dispels five myths about the medical malpractice crisis:
Myth No. 1: The medical malpractice crisis is someone else's problem, not mine.
[Fact:] Premiums paid for malpractice insurance directly affect everyone's access to needed care and the cost of this care. ...
Myth No. 2: We need to preserve the current legal system to guarantee a fair hearing and provide compensation for patients harmed by the health care system.
[Fact:] The medical justice system today is mostly random; it has become essentially a lottery. ... [N]ine out of 10 victims of disability-causing malpractice go uncompensated. ... And a recent study by Harvard University researchers found that 80 percent of malpractice claims were filed against doctors who made no error whatever. ...
Myth No. 3: The malpractice system is necessary to punish and remove incompetent health care providers.
[Fact:] ... [T]he system ... perversely protects doctors who need to be removed from practice, by enabling them to sue other physicians who might step forward to question their competence. ... [In addition,] the current system discourages doctors from talking about system failures for fear of being sued. ...
Myth No. 4: Malpractice costs are not a big deal--they amount to less than 2 percent of total health care costs.
[Fact:] The number sounds insignificant until you stop to consider that U.S. health care spending was a staggering $1.66 trillion in 2003--so we are talking of costs on the order of $16 billion to $32 billion. ... [T]he added costs of defensive medicine are estimated at $50 billion to $100 billion per year. ...
Myth No. 5: The current malpractice insurance system is in crisis because insurance companies are trying to cover losses from unwise financial investments made during the dot-com boom.
[Fact:] Malpractice insurance rates are skyrocketing in large part because of the increasing size of malpractice awards.
Read more about Common Good's broadly-supported proposal to create special health courts to solve the problem of unreliable medical justice.
Read "Dispelling Malpractice Myths" by William R. Brody.
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