Comments on: Rising Health Care Costs in America

By: lawandbiosciences

lawandbiosciences — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:04:52 +0000

Medical malpractice is not the problem. In fact, most victims of med mal never sue, and those who do sue actually don’t recover as much as the headline grabbing outlier cases suggest. Focusing on sympathetic docs is a way for big corporations to cap damages across the board (even for products liability) without looking like cold soulless machines. – Teneille

By: Amy

Amy — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:11:10 +0000

There’s been a LOT of talk about the costs imposed by litigation in the general debate about rising costs of healthcare — with doctors and republicans wishing to impose settlement caps on malpractice lawsuits, and most of us searching for ways to limit and/or decrease the causes of such litigation. Pres. Obama seems to be hedging on that topic for now, not wanting to offend doctors OR democrats. Look for the term “defensive medicine” in the news.

By: waltzingaustralia

waltzingaustralia — Fri, 22 May 2009 03:27:34 +0000

Just curious, but doesn’t anyone note how the litigation explosion contributes to some of this — including the increase in “thoroughness” (in order to avoid a lawsuit)? Everything above is definitely part of the problem, but costs first started to skyrocket when people started treating lawsuits as an alternative to buying lottery tickets.