When President Obama addressed the American Medical Association (AMA) in Chicago on June 15, the President told the crowd of physicians that he recognized that his health care plan could not succeed unless doctors were freed from their fear of lawsuits. While the President did not go into details about how this would be accomplished, he did say that he was not proposing a cap on jury damage awards in medical malpractice suits.The President’s speech to the AMA highlighted one of the central debates in the Obama administration’s struggle to push health care reform: Will the reform also include tort reform, and if so, in what capacity?Whether or not to put a federal cap on medical malpractice damage awards has been an issue of intense debate between the legal community and the medical community. Salt Lake City personal injury attorneys
Doctors blame soaring medical malpractice insurance premiums on large jury awards in med mal cases and argue that the costs of health care will not decrease until there is significant tort reform. Tort reform proponents claim the high cost of medical malpractice insurance has led to an exodus of physicians in states with the highest premiums, resulting in some communities having little to no access to doctors or specialists without traveling hours from their homes.Physicians also argue that the fear of being sued forces them into practicing defensive medicine, which results in doctors ordering more tests and performing more diagnostic procedures than they otherwise would if not for the fear of being sued. In turn, these additional tests and procedures then raise the overall costs of providing health care.Attorneys representing victims of medical negligence, on the other hand, believe that physicians have severely overestimated how much defensive medicine actually contributes to the overall costs of the American health care system.