Texas Law Capping Medical Malpractice Awards Hasn't Cut Health Care Costs

In 2003, Texans were promised that if they capped noneconomic damages in medical malpractice awards, they would eventually see a reduction in their total health care costs, and they bought the claim. Texas enacted one of the toughest bills in the country capping medmal award damages. Almost eight years later, that hasn't happened at all.

One study of data on Medicare spending in Texas for years following the enactment of the law shows the following: "Not only has per person Medicare spending in Texas continued to exceed the national average, the data also show that such spending rose at nearly twice the national average (15.1% versus 8.7%) in the four years since the medical liability reform legislation was passed. Furthermore, before such 'cost-saving' legislation went into effect, per person Medicare reimbursement rates in Texas were the tenth highest in the nation. In 2007, reimbursement rates in Texas had risen to the second highest. None of this is resounding evidence that tort reform has been successful in controlling health care costs."

And a new review by the Dallas Morning News shows that since the medmal law was enacted in 2003, family and single health insurance premiums rose by 51 and 45 percent, respectively, roughly equal to the increase nationwide. Even the President of the Texas Medical Association, the doctors' lobby in Texas, admitted, "(W)e haven't seen the overall cost of medical care go down."

The Dallas Morning News review showed that medical malpractice insurance premiums for doctors in Texas have decreased since the law was enacted. But that's been a nationwide phenomenon, according to Congressional testimony by Joanne Doroshow of the Center for Justice and Democracy in January. Moreover, as she pointed out, "Premiums have dropped irrespective of whether 'tort reforms' were enacted in any particular state, such as Texas. States with little or no restrictions on patients' legal rights have experienced the same level of liability insurance rate changes as those states that enacted severe restrictions on patients' rights." So the drop in Texas medmal insurance premiums isn't necessarily attributable to the enactment of the medmal law. And in any event, the patients haven't seen any benefit from that reduction. My thanks go to Mary Alice McLarty of the McLarty Pope law firm in Dallas for sending me the DMNchart.

Over 40 states have already enacted some form of state "tort reform," many with the promise of lower costs to consumers. I would like to read ANY reliable study that finds thatANY state law capping medical malpractice awards was followed by a drop in health care costs in that state, but I doubt that any such study exists.\

Source: http://voices.injuryboard.com/medical-malpractice/texas-law-capping-medical-malpractice-awards-hasnt-cut-health-care-costs.aspx?googleid=292510