During the Telephone Town Hall meeting on August 5th, one caller asked why there was no tort reform in the health care bill. Jay Inslee stated that tort reform has proven not to cut costs or lower Dr’s. malpractice insurance, using McAllen, TX as his example. He sited an article from the New Yorker called: “The Cost Conundrum – What a Texas town can teach us about health care”, by Atul Gawande. While listening to his response I looked up the article on the Internet, and I found additional information that completely contradicted what he was saying. I had also listed to his last TTHM on YouTube , (you can listen to a recording of last week’s health town hall meeting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=428W7_aMCVA ) and he referred to McAllen, TX and the same article validating his position that tort reform doesn’t work.
One of the first statement that caught my eye from the article: “McAllen, with its high poverty rate, has an incidence of heavy drinking sixty per cent higher than the national average. And the Tex-Mex diet has contributed to a thirty-eight-per-cent obesity rate”. Well, after reading the rest of the article, I had the impression that this was a very poor area, people did not have healthy life styles, and there were a bunch of Doctors getting rich. Please read the article and see if you can figure out how any of this proves that Tort Reform doesn’t work.
In looking for the article, I found 2 other interesting articles. The most current, dated July 2009 was Texas-style health care reform is bigger and better … fascinating reading. Now McAllen, TX may be the most expensive town for medicare patients in the US … but the State of Texas appears to be a prime example of how success Tort Reform has been in lowering costs for malpractice insurance, attracting large numbers of Doctors to practice there and has improved their economy.
The second article, TEXAS: Tort Reform Spurs Economic Growth; Aids Access to Healthcare is very informative! This article talks about Tort Reform that was passed in 2003. There are stats from different sources including Associated Press, showing that lawsuite went down, more doctors are moving to Texas to practice, more insurance companies came into Texas, mal practice insurance rates dropped, premiums were cut and the overall ecomony grew. I would say these are good reasons for the Federal Government to take a better look at Tort Reform.
Could it be that to many Attorneys have power within the democrat party, and politically it wouldn’t be in their best interest to to consider Tort Reform???
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So, why hasn’t tort reform in Texas actually resulted in cost savings in Texas? Yes, doctors are saving money and moving to TX to take a bigger share of skyrocketing bills, but as far as I can tell, Texans are not saving money on their health care bills.
Tort reform, as shown in Texas does reduce the operating expenses for Doctors. It is only one of many steps that should be considered in Health Care Reform to reduce the waste in medical spending. It is not “the” answer, but one of many that should be addressed.
The point was, Jay Inslee used the article in the New Yorker to support his position that tort reform doesn’t work and therefore doesn’t need to be considered in HCR. His representation was misleading as that article had nothing to do with tort reform, either positive or negative, when pointing to the cost of health care in McAllen, TX.