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Showing posts from September, 2010

Med Mal Costs Are Only 2% of Health Care Spending

It is so frustrating to us that misrepresentations continue to be made by insurance companies in order to create fear in people. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the "tort reform" of medical malpractice cases. A new study by the Harvard School of Public Health in the journal Health Affairs shows that medical malpractices costs are only 2% of health care spending in the United States. Although the full text of the study is not free online, you can read the abstract here . Costs related to medical negligence litigation accounted for only 2.4 percent of total health care spending in 2008, far less than some tort “reform” advocates have been asserting, according to a new report. “This study, along with the vast majority of academic data, shows that limiting the rights of injured patients will do practically nothing to lower health care costs,” said American Association for Justice spokesman Ray DeLorenzi. Instead, our focus should be on preventing the 98,000 deat
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