One of the main conservative talking points regarding control of health insurance costs has to do with tort reform. In order to reduce the cost of medical care, they say, we must limit frivolous lawsuits and limit the amount of the awards to victims when the lawsuits turn out to be not so frivolous. According to the conservatives, this will reduce the cost to insurance companies and thereby reduce the cost of malpractice insurance premiums to physicians. Physicians, in turn, will reduce the amount they have to charge their patients for medical care. Everybody’s happy. Well, maybe not.
Here in the great state of Texas, in 2003, the conservatives, backed by insurance companies and physician’s lobbies ran an energetic, extensive, expensive and very effective campaign, extolling the virtues of tort reform and demonizing those who have received hefty malpractice jury awards in order to get tort reform passed. And pass it did; and by no small margin.
The campaign promised lower insurance premiums for those already covered and with lower premiums, a greater access to health insurance for those who have been, heretofore, unable to afford insurance. Texans flocked to vote for tort reform; finally, they would be able to take care of their families. Tort reform would become the insurance version of the Promised Land. The streets would be paved with gold.
It is now 2009; six years since the enactment of tort reform and the streets are paved with gold. Well, if you happen to be an insurance company or a physician they’re paved with gold. For patients, not so much.
Insurance companies in Texas are making greater profits than ever. Medically related lawsuits have been reduced by 70% since 2003. In addition, since damage amounts are capped, costs to insurers are further dramatically reduced.Physicians have seen cuts in their insurance costs of anywhere from 25 to, in some cases, over 50 percent. So far so good?
Unfortunately, for the majority of those who so ardently supported tort reform (i.e. patients) it was still more of their gold with which the streets were paved.
Insurance premiums in Texas have skyrocketed 104 percent since 2000. Texas suffers with the highest rate of uninsured in the nation. 25 percent of all Texans have no health insurance coverage. 75 percent of those are households with at least one full-time worker. Employer sponsored health care coverage in Texas has, in fact, declined from 57 percent to 50 percent since tort reform became the law of the land. Co-pays have continued to increase every year.
There is no question that tort reform is a panacea, but only for those already making a killing by keeping people alive.
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catch-22
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For Your Eyes Only
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Insurance companies have a classic -- and obviously misleading -- set of tactics: make the other guy look like he's fleecing the public, and they get to stuff their bank accounts while no one's looking. They know most people don't like lawyers - at least until they desperately NEED one - because it's hard to like something that you don't understand anything about, so it's easy to win the public opinion war.
I took almost all the "bad baby" cases in my office; the other reporters couldn't stand them. Women, often poor, in labor in hospitals where their babies grow increasingly hypoxic and die (if they're lucky) or are born with brains that will never really function -- those women and their husbands don't deserve fair recompense for their loss? If I go on, I'll be gasping with anger.
Thanks. Rated, more than once if I could.
Start spreading the news......
Medical costs will continue to skyrocket, even under an Obama plan, I fear. Unless price controls are imposed on what physicians can charge, prices will go up, up, and up, since more affordable health care insurance will mean greater demand for medical services, without an increase in medical supply. The laws of supply and demand will not go away.
I doubt there is a handful of corporations in the country that think of anything but profits and often wonder why the right wing fanatics always seem to side with big business even though it is almost always against their better interests to do so.
The disruptions they are causing at town hall meetings across the country is a perfect example. Do they manage to think for themselves at all, or do they just blindly do as they are told?
PS. Florida is a mess, too. They passed tort reform here in'99. It's totally backfired. The insurance companies didn't lower their premiums, so the doctors just decided to not buy any malpractice insurance.
Still, with loopholes and some fancy lawyering, they manage to hide their assets when they get sued and manage to pay out very little if anything to those patience who end up in wheelchairs or worse. What a fucked up system. How can anyone in their right mind stand behind these insurance companies?
Thank you, Bill. I hope somebody is listening.
Procopius: What you say may be true but we were promised these huge savings. And if the Dr.'s are receiving benefits why are none of these passed along to the consumer?
Michael: "why the right wing fanatics always seem to side with big business even though it is almost always against their better interests to do so. " I have always wondered about this myself. I simply cannot figure it out.
I will gently say: all insurance companies set their rates based on geography, whether the policies are written to underwrite auto liability, malpractice, health...it's all priced by zip code. The insurance on my car in Southern California costs probably three or four times what it would cost to insure the same car in the rural South. Every insurance company must be authorized through an individual state's insurance office to write insurance in that state, but every state's requirements are different.
All of this is boring minutia but it, in many ways, controls our lives. It all rolls hugely in favor of big corporate insurance companies and against individuals. I'm a pretty centrist dem, but the stuff I've seen -- and had to deal with -- on this issue in my life makes me want to see heads roll.
As you point out, tort reform does nothing but increase profit for insurance companies and the medical practitioners. And it will only get worse as the government funded medical care adds to the demand for medical services. Prices will go up, and the gov't system will either incur huge deficits, or higher out of pocket deductibles will negate the benefit of lower premiums.
The ONLY way reform will work is if prices are subject to regulation.
Monte