Four professors, two from the University of Texas, one from the University of Illinois, and one from Columbia, demolished another of Bush's "crises" on the Op-Ed page of today's New York Times. They conclude:
The federal "solution" that Mr. Bush proposes is both overbroad and directed at the wrong problem.
Bet they're talking about Social Security, right? Or maybe Bush's expected signature on the bankruptcy bill?
No. They're lawyers and doctors and they've combed through the data at the Department of Insurance "in Mr. Bush's home state of Texas," and they've found that those huge malpractice payouts won by greed lawyers are, well, just more "WMD's.".
Some examples of what they found:
The number of total paid claims per 100 practicing physicians per year fell to fewer than five in 2002 from greater than six in 1990-92.
Mean and median payouts per large paid claim were roughly constant.
Jury verdicts in favor of plaintiffs showed no trend over time.
The total cost of large malpractice claims was both stable and a small fraction (less than 1 percent) of total health care expenditures in Texas.
In short, as far as medical malpractice cases are concerned, for 15 years the Texas tort system has been remarkably stable. Texas's situation is not unique. One study of Florida's experience from 1990 to 2003 also found declines in paid claims per 100 practicing physicians as well as per 100,000 population. Over the same period in Missouri, the total number of malpractice claims fell by about 40 percent and the number of paid claims dropped almost by half.
The rest of their conclusions can be found here.
Update: The Washington Post has a follow-up article on the malpractice scam here.
