Don’t hold your breath this evening waiting for President Obama to utter the words “trial lawyers.” As former DNC chairman Howard Dean told an August town hall crowd, Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have carefully avoided including anything in Obamacare that the trial lawyers oppose. As this newspaper has repeatedly noted, the trial lawyers lobby is among Washington’s most powerful special interest groups. The trial lawyers used their generous campaign contributions to buy enough senators and representatives to kill measures they oppose, and to approve legislation they favor. Not coincidentally, the latter often creates new reasons for them to sue somebody. That way, the trial lawyers make more money and the politicians get more campaign cash. What the trial lawyers won’t tolerate, though,is health care reform that includes medical malpractice caps.
A major factor in rising health care costs is the ever-present threat to doctors and other health care professionals of being sued by trial lawyers looking for big contingency settlements and the fat fees that come with them. As a result, medical malpractice insurance premiums have zoomed into the stratosphere, thus encouraging “defensive medicine.” Defensive medicine is when doctors order multiple tests, MRIs, and other procedures, not because the patient needs them, but to protect against litigation based on allegations that something should have been done that wasn’t. Experts estimate that as much as $300 billion in unnecessary health care costs are attributable to defensive medicine. Besides more time-consuming appointments, patients are left with fewer services and less access to quality care as doctors either narrow their practices or leave the medical profession entirely.
