ObamaCare = Malpractice and Tort Reform
This country has a misplaced over-reliance on litigation, poorly trained lawyers and ambulance chasers (including attorneys general) to remedy errors in products, professional services and public policy.
The quest for value (quality/price) has led to CQI and error-free products delivered by producers around the world. How long does a supplier of defective product survive contracts with Wal-Mart or Target? Zero hours from discovery, not years, as in medicine.
In medicine, we have always relied on the medical professions to police themselves via a combination of education, licensing, credentialing and state medical boards. It doesn't work in an age of sophistication in diagnosis, treatment, technology and the like. The data on medical errors, including deaths, is incontrovertible, and yet the medical professions refuse efforts to change, preferring to blame others for their "defensive medicine."
The professions have ready allies in patients like us who have always relied on our trusting relationships with them to deliver exactly what we need or want. It's a rare doctor who doesn't take his own precious time to excoriate insurance, managed care, Medicare, the government, regulations, lawyers or "the business of health care," whenever patients raise questions about prescriptions or cost.
The medical industry (professions and products) have come up with an easy rationale for what they conveniently label "defensive medicine." It's called "cap punitive damages." In Minnesota, no cap is necessary because juries of Minnesotans don't like to penalize their doctors. Damage awards are so low as to induce settlement of even egregious cases. In other states (follow the power of the trial bar a la a Grisham novel) legislative caps are necessary.
The trial bar and the Ralph Nader crusaders fight back and the Democrats fall in line behind "consumer protection" and the American Trial Lawyers Association. So we have a stand-off, and the medical errors, the unnecessary deaths and the poor comparative quality of medical care and over-priced products continues unabated. I am a policy veteran of the wars to get past this stand-off with medical liability reform. It doesn't work because "public opinion" refuses to deal with the fact that their doctors and hospitals make mistakes.
This is a policy debate worth having apart from "health insurance reform" or whatever we currently call the legislative effort at policy change. However, it would require physician, hospital and medical technology leadership. If they won't come forward and be honest about what really goes on in the "practice of medicine," we don't stand a chance.