Many readers of this blog do not want to limit patients’ ability to sue for unfortunate outcomes. That’s fine, but acknowledge the consequences of that viewpoint. You can’t have it all:
I submit that the health-care malpractice situation has a similar three-component system: unlimited access to the tort system (i.e., no limits on malpractice suits); inexpensive to society (the cost of coverage is placed primarily on providers, hospitals and physicians); and broad availability of physicians and specialists. Our system has essentially unlimited access to the tort system and financing primarily through providers. The downside is that availability will be limited.We should not forget that once a physician leaves, it is very unlikely that market forces will bring the physician back. There is also the problem that when a critical number of physicians leave, the limited number of remaining physicians in a specialty become overwhelmed and subsequently cut back on services, further exacerbating the problem. In other words, availability of physicians and specialists is not a fluid component of the system, and when other areas of the three-component model change, availability will follow very slowly.
