The Legal Reader

President Bush, as he is wont to do, is trying to portray a "crisis" in medical malpractice insurance rates, blame it on trial lawyers, and push for reform. But:

[F]or all the worry over higher medical expenses, legal costs do not seem to be at the root of the recent increase in malpractice insurance premiums. Government and industry data show only a modest rise in malpractice claims over the last decade. And last year, the trend in payments for malpractice claims against doctors and other medical professionals turned sharply downward, falling 8.9 percent, to a nationwide total of $4.6 billion, according to data compiled by the Health and Human Services Department. . . .

[M]r. Weiss of Weiss Ratings and researchers at Dartmouth College, who separately studied data on premiums and payouts for medical mistakes in the 1990's and early 2000's, said they were unable to find a meaningful link between claims payments by insurers and the prices they charged doctors.

''We didn't see it,'' said Amitabh Chandra, an assistant professor of economics at Dartmouth. ''Surprisingly, there appears to be a fairly weak relationship.''

But none of this will stand in the way of the neocons in the Bush administration who will continue to tell us that the system is in "crisis" (just like Social Security) and that we desperately need "tort reform." Details here from The New York Times via LexisONE.com.