Personal Injury Law

Malpractice Caps Shown to Have No Effect On Medical Costs

By Steven M. Levin and John J. Perconti

The Insurance and Financial Advisor News recently published a story that reiterates the reality that limits on malpractice damage awards have little to no effect on health care costs.

Supporters of the caps typically claim that medical costs will be drastically lowered by limiting the amount of money a jury can award a victim of malpractice, regardless of the injury. However data continues to roll in revealing that claim to be nothing more than a false myth used to push a specific political agenda. In fact, a report by the Congressional Budget Office in 2004 explained that limiting the damage awards, at a maximum, influence healthcare costs by less than one half of one percent.

However, regardless of the truth, many state medical lobbies have effectively passed state laws to create arbitrary caps on damage awards for malpractice victims. For example, Florida has a $500,000 cap for regular doctors and $150,000 caps for emergency room doctors. Investigators into the state explained that over 1/3 of doctors in many area do not even have malpractice insurance. In those cases, the victims of an uninsured doctor likely have no means to receive compensation for the mistakes made and losses suffered.

Full post as published by Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog on December 20, 2010 (boomark / email).