Advocates are saying that a single payer system man be an answer to solve malpractice woes:
She noted that if health care was guaranteed through government funding there would be no need for malpractice suits and settlements to take into account the future health care costs of plaintiffs. This is particularly important in obstetrical cases given the future medical interventions and life expectancy of these babies.
For physicians to accept a government-run system, this is a critical selling point.
However, it will be unlikely that the trial lawyers, who comprise a pillar of the Democratic party, would allow this to happen.
Related posts:
- The single-payer backdoor
- More on Illinois’ single-payer death
- America’s failed attempt at a single-payer system, the Indian Health Service
- Single-payer and the Indian Health Service
- Banning balace billing is tantamount to single-payer
- Single payer = physician shortages
- The RUC, medical home and the specter of single-payer
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{ 4 comments }
I do not seriously believe malpractice costs will be forgiven by any goverment payor, though there might be ERISA style thwarting of the collateral source rule.
The government will find a way to hold individual physicians and hosptials responsible for malpractice costs.
I live and practice obstetrics in a country where you do have guaranteed health care – paid by the tax-payer via the government – for everyone, and a social security system that must be one of the most comprehensive in the world.
And yet the malpractice business is booming. In fact, I am going to court again come november to face the usual combination of greedy lawyer+child with neurological handicap+stupid judge who can’t even spell neurological.
As a patient, as family to patients, I fear the single payer system enough to support and personally engage in extreme violence to prevent it. It would be a Trojan Horse for the takeover of the $2 Tril health budget by the lawyer profession, government being a wholly owned subsidiary of it.
I have an one word rebuttal of the single payer system. Princess Di. It killed a princess by its core, irremediable failures. What chance do ordinary patients like the members of my family have?
I would not allow it for dogs.
If it happens in the US it will be no-fault, much like the workers comp system.
If physicians are really willing to take government run healthcare for something that has so minor a effect on their lives as the malpractice issue, then their understanding of economics is even weaker than anyone ever thought.
And Kevin, it’s not the lawyers who will be screaming the loudest. It’s your liability carrier. Ever wonder why they haven’t proposed it as a solution to the “malpractice crisis”?
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