Will lowering malpractice law suites lower health care cost ?

doctors who make stupid mistakes can just move their practice to another state and start all over again.These doctors cause most of the law suites and without them malpractice law suites would all but disappear.When a doctor makes a mistake on you they want to take that option away from you instead of putting pressure on those doctors who may not know what the hell they are doing.So there are two sides to this issue and all they want the people to see is just one side.If a doctor through his own mistake cause you or your child to be crippled for life why shouldn't he have to pay for the damages.To stop the law suites stop stupid doctors from practicing medicine.These guys are easy to find they are the ones with the pile of law suites.That may solve a lot of the problems with higher health care cost.Or maybe that profession just may be just getting even,remember when they got paid in chickens ? There is no way you shouldn't be able to suite a doctor who hurt you due to his or her own stupidity .Its a shame they lump the right law suites in with the bad ones.They should make the bad doctors get retrained or find another line of work.

there are also a number of patients who make their living suing doctors.
every doctor has several suits filed against him or her.
typically they are without merit.
but if you were to look at the record of your favorite doctor, you'd be worried.

mind you, i'm not sure where i stand on this one.
maybe, as long as a doctor stays in one place, and doesn't jump around, it's okay if their records stay secret.
when doctors start state hopping, then it's time to make their records public.

how 'bout, on application to practice in the 3rd state, then their records become public.

It's just that people are too sue happy. They will sue over the most idiotic claims because they know a dumb jury will fall for it, or the insurance company will pay off a smaller amount because it would be cheaper than paying lawyers to defend it. All this suing raises the insurance doctors have to pay so high, many of them find it cheaper to work for a hospital or quit practicing all together.

a few states have imposed damage caps and procedural limitations, like a professional screening committe. They did so based on the assurances of the industry that rates would go down. However, they are insurers. Insurance rates don't go down. The net effect of such laws is simply to increase the profits of the insurers and let the bad doctors escape scrutiny.

True. There is minority of doctors who repeatedly have screw up, yet the AMA really doesn't discipline these doctors by revoking their medical license. These screw-ups just raise our rates. Add it to the fact that shareholders now approve multi-million dollar CEO pay, and we wind up paying too much for care. Even ins, companies get screwy on 'treatment plans'. My friend had a mammogram, nothing. # months later, she felt a lump. Doc said, "don't worry". She had a thermal scan, paid for it herself. cost $185. They said, it is cancer. Back to the doc. The cancer doctor could not do treatment till she had a positive on a mammogram (industry standard). No cancer showed in the mammogram, so they ordered a MRI at over $1000. Guess what, cancer! And an aggressive fast-growing cancer. Now treatment could progress. Silly.

It seems that blaming excessive healthcare costs on lawsuits is just a lame way of justifying excessive costs by the medical industry. In most cases, the only accountability a patient can get for malpractice is through a lawsuit. The suits require the patient to use experts that are very costly, and most lawyers won't even touch a malpractice case unless it is clearly malpractice. It costs too much up front to file frivolous lawsuits. So the ones that happen, need to happen.

Preventing incompetent doctors from practicing would avoid additional medical treatment to fix their mistakes. This would, of course, lower healthcare costs. And it's not lawsuits that make hospitals charge $25 for a bandaid. Those costs are decided by someone else trying to make a buck. A lot of people making a lot of money in the medical field, insurance companies, and medical equipment companies seem to be the source of the real costs.