An interesting article in today's Mother Jones summarizes the Republican approach to health care reform and notes their continued and misguided attention on trial lawyers and malpractice claims. Although the House of Representatives voted yesterday to repeal the Obama Health Care Law, they have offered no sound alternatives and have spoken only in broad brush about making health care more affordable by privatization and tort reform. There are no real alternative plans being offered, and those that did exist and were promoted by the more moderate Republicans whose reelection in many states is now in doubt, mirrored the reformed passed by Congress last year.

One thing is for certain, however: Tort reform will have absolutely no effect on the cost of health care in this country. In previous blogs, we discussed the fact that defense medicine accounts for very little by way of increased cost for medical care. As reported in Mother Jones, statistics from the National Center on State Courts reveals that "medical malpractice lawsuits accounted for single digit percentages of all state civil caseloads. NCSC concludes, 'Despite their continued notoriety, rarely does a medical malpractice caseload exceed a few hundred cases in any one state in one year.' NCSC data shows that medical malpractice lawsuits plummeted by about 15 percent between 1999 and 2008, according to the most recent data available. And that's without any help at all from Congress."

In our September 7th blogpost, we noted that a Harvard study revealed that malpractice claims have no appreciable cost on healthcare. " $55.6 billion is the annual 'cost' of malpractice in the United States. Interestingly, this amount represents only 2.4 percent of overall health care spending in the United States and includes approximately $45.6 billion in what the researchers call 'defensive medicine,' i.e., those tests and procedures ordered by health care providers allegedly out of fear for being sued. In other words, 82 percent of the 'costs' of medical malpractice represents what physicians claim is otherwise unnecessary tests and procedures ordered only out of a fear for being sued. In the end, the Harvard study confirms that defensive medicine represents a very small percentage of the overall health care costs in the United States (2.4 percent) and that malpractice litigation and claims payouts are a much smaller and a very trivial fraction of that amount."

The Obama Plan is ambitious and is the law. Although it will not become fully operational until 2014, there is lots of work to be done to draft the regulations and educate the consumer and industry on the operation and effect of the new law. Republicans need to spend their time reading the new laws rather than blindly criticizing them. They should stop wasting time on rhetoric and self promotion and should refocus their energy on doing what is right for the American people and our economy. Trial lawyers and tort reform when suggested as a fix for health care reflects how misinformed the Republican legislators are on the real problems with health care in this country.