Heh. I was just watching the reconciliation conference on CSPAN 2, and all of the R reps were afflicted with what I call Tort Reform Tourette's. Guess they need to get another disease stat.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - As the House of Representatives prepares to vote Sunday on a package that Democrats say will make health care more affordable, critics insist the "big government takeover of health care" is not only unwarranted, but that a part of the solution is so obvious it's a crime Democrats failed to embrace it.
It's called tort reform, or putting the brakes on junk lawsuits. If doctors and hospitals don't need to worry about defending themselves against baseless malpractice lawsuits, they'll stop ordering needless, duplicative tests and halt the practice of defensive medicine, Republican congressional leaders say. It's an easy and necessary way to bring down costs for all Americans, they say.
The problem is, Ohio has already taken that step, as have many other states. Yet five years after a difficult but successful fight in Columbus to pass tort reform, health-care costs in the state have not gone down. And health policy analysts say it may not be possible to say whether costs would have spiked even higher had Ohio not passed lawsuit reform.
Costs climbed even after the legislature limited the size of jury verdicts for pain and suffering to $250,000 except in catastrophic cases, restricted punitive damages, and made it tougher to take a case to trial. In 2004, the year Ohio passed lawsuit liability reform, average premiums for employer-based family health plans were $9,590, according to data from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. By 2008, average family premiums were $11,425.
This means that four years after the state passed tort reform, health insurance for Ohio families in employer plans had gone up by 19 percent.
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