In an article written by Lori Montgomery in The Washington Post, “CBO: Medical Malpractice Reforms Could Save Up to $54 billion” she discusses how the Congressional Budget Office is set to impose a range of limits on medical malpractice lawsuits. Obama’s new health care reform attempts to lower malpractice insurance premiums for medical providers. The money saved comes from limiting the number of procedures, tests, and data that must be shown in court to defend themselves. This clause within the health care reform is important, not only because it saves billions of dollars, but Republicans are backing this decision having stressed for months that the health care package needed limits on malpractice lawsuits.
However these incentives and bipartisanship does not come without a few strings. First, there is a cap of $250,000 on awards for nonecomonic damages; pain and suffering.
Second, a cap on punitive damages of $500,000.
Third, there is a modification of the “collateral source” rule to allow evidence of income from such sources as health and life insurance, workers’ compensation, and automobile insurance to be introduced at trials or to require that such income is subtracted from awards decided by juries.
Fourth, a statute of limitations, one year for adults and three years for children, from the date of discovery of an injury. This means that an injured person must respond and file a lawsuit within a certain time frame. If something were to occur as a direct result from a malpractice, after the time window, they are simply out of luck.
Finally, replacement of joint-and-several liability with a fair-share rule, under which a defendant in a lawsuit would be liable only for the percentage of the final award that was equal to his or her share of responsibility for the injury.
The question is, are these tradeoffs proposed by lawmakers worth the potential $54 billion saved? Or is this another way for malpractice to continue without as severe repercussions?
Similar to most of the other money saving policies being proposed in this health reform bill, this issue regarding malpractice insurance looks good on paper, but there are many hidden consequences if you read between the lines. I think that it would make a lot of sense to try and save money by lowering medical malpractice premiums. Any way in which the federal government can save money would positively contribute to the current health care reform. However, it is clearly not as simple as it sounds because hidden costs and other consequences are attached to these money saving policies. I do not necessarily believe that the trade-off proposed by law makers is worth the potential billions of dollars that is promised to be saved. This is because I think that a majority of these policies, including this one, cannot be trusted. Politicians are trying to do what sounds best on paper to expand their popularity, but when policies, such as this, are implemented will it really work out? And will the recipients actually be happy with all of the drawbacks that come with the initial incentives? It is hard to tell because these questions can and will only be answered after the policy is implemented.
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