Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, who worked as a workplace injury lawyer before his election in 2006, joined other congressional liberals in questioning the Congressional Budget Office’s recent assessment that tort reform measures would lower federal health care spending. Among his questions: Can you really make such claims about $54 billion in savings from a few simple tort reform measures? And won’t tort reform worsen care and cause more patients to die?
Today, CBO provided its answer: In short, “Yes we can, and No it won’t.”
[T]he limited evidence currently available about the effects of tort reform on health outcomes is much more mixed than the larger collection of evidence currently available about the effects of tort reform on health care spending.
The available studies are mixed on the effects of tort reform on care — some suggest that it improves care, some suggest no effect, and at least one suggests that it worsens care. But CBO is effectively saying that “the science is in” on the savings that it will produce.
Unfortunately, the health care bills under consideration in Congress punish states that implement these very tort reform measures.
