People filing frivilous suits might think they have a legitimate belief they were wronged but in the vast majority of malpractice cases they were not. There is a fine line between being mistaken and malice. Often it turns out that someone files a suit against a doctor because of not liking the doctor’s bedside manner or seeing something the doctor said to them as rude.

On the other hand, those who legitimately suffer injuries often do not sue. There is very little correlation between malpractice suits and true medical errors or situations in which patients are truly harmed. Society pays the consequences of this warped system with higher medical expenses.

Of course any system to replace the legal system could not be run by the HMO’s.

Probably not (depending upon how it is done). Malpractice cases have little to do with poor medical care and such cases do very little to benefit actual victims of medical negligence. Most malpractice suits arise because people just don’t like their doctor, have unrealistic views as to outcomes, or are looking for easy money. A small percentage of malpractice suits are over legitimate complaints, and even in these cases it is the lawyers who benefit far more than the victims. It would be best to take medical malpractice entirely out of the court system due to the added costs for medical care which arise from this system.

Investigating actual cases of medical errors would be done better outside of the legal system due to both the poor correlation between malpractice suits and actual malpractice and the development of a culture of hiding errors out of a fear of suits which makes them harder to fix. Most medical errors are a result of system problems which could be better addressed without the fear of law suits hanging over any attempts to look for problems.

A mechanism for treating victims of medical errors should also be established independent of the tort system. If we have universal health care we will no longer need big settlements to ensure that people receive medical care that is necessary to remedy problems from true malpractice. We also need an objective way to compensate people who have legitimate need for additional assistance beyond routine health care as a result of malpractice.

One of many problems with the conservative gripe is that they are already paying more for health care due to the cost shifting because of the uninsured. It would be better to do this in a more open and more cost effective manner.

Nevertheless, as I said, she captured the fundamental problem perfectly:

Americans with access to quality health care would rather deny there is a problem (and ignore the human cost of them problem, and the economic cost of meeting the human cost of the problem) than have to spend more time in the waiting room than they already do.

The problem is that those who cannot get into the waiting room at all would gladly wait if they could just get inside.

I am not saying that anyone enjoys all-day wait-times to see a doctor or that waiting should be any longer than absolutely necessary, but I am saying that the fundamental conservative/libertarian argument against meaningful health care reform is ‘I would rather require someone else to go without care entirely than to give up any convenience.’

I agree that costs are not likely to go down, in the sense that many people believe they can be so drastically reduced. I am all in favor of society sharing that cost far more efficiently, so that society’s members can share access to medical care far more equitably.

It is worth noting, however, that costs can be greatly managed by eliminating the ‘for profit’ element of medical care.