Submitted by Jamie Grifo MD PhD, Feb 25, 2007 10:51

We are all interested in reducing health care costs. Most media coverage of this looks exclusively at cutting tax expenditures as the way to reduce costs. Why has no one even thought about why health care costs are so high in the first place? As one who sees where health care dollars are spent, I can assure you that we are missing the boat. The current litigation system and and its cost is buried in every medical transaction, every hospital admission, every prescription, every medical consumable and every regulation legislated by the regulators. While the trial lawyers insist that the total cost of all malpractice premiums are a small percentage of all medical costs (but they are still a huge number) they ignore the true costs. Legislating and regulating perfect medicine in an imperfect world is not possible nor economically feasible. The current court system of resolving disputes of medical malpractice disproportionately rewards lawyers and insurance companies and not victims. We all pay for this! In addition, it breeds a culture of regulation whose main goal is to make paper trails for litigators while never questioning effectiveness or cost of regulation. (I can assure you that many regulations are neither cost effective nor effective.) If you think the latest 20 million dollar malpractice verdict or the 2 billion awarded for the silicon breast implant damages (which, by the way, is now scientifically incorrect) is making your medical costs less and making medicine better, then you are drinking the same cool aide as the trial lawyer lobby (but not getting your 30% payout).

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