I think you know the answer to that one.

70% of premiums go to legal fees? If you’ve been paying $32000 for several years with no claims that stat wouldn’t make sense. You may want to look at who is in your risk pool and what your insurers historic profit margin is.

Simply because someone makes an honest mistake doesn’t mean it’s not negligence. I may make an honest mistake that the light was green when it was in fact red, but my action in proceeding through the intersection and striking someone is still a negligent act. Wouldn’t you agree, DB?

“The third is the rule that makes each side bear its own costs. This induces riskier lawsuits than are undertaken in most other countries, such as Canada, England and most of Europe, where the loser pays the legal costs of the winner.”

Also, this is a broad generalization that is nowhere near a blanket rule in Europe, nor does it reflect whether those costs are ever collected. Not to mention, nearly every state in the US ALREADY has a form of loser pays. And, much of the litigation role in the US is handled in Europe by more detailed regulation and more government intervention. Pick your poison.

“American courts commonly think it proper for juries to infer medical negligence from the mere occurrence of a serious injury.”

This is simply a completely incorrect statement. A jury must find negligence, not simply a “serious injury” and infer from there.

Why the editorial would leave those facts out in making the comparison is unknown.

I think the problem with comparing other legal malpractice systems is that you also have to compare the healthcare system in conjunction. The need for pursuing a claim for future medical bills and lost wages and your overall decline in the quality of your life is not as urgent in countries with a deeper social safety net than that provided by the US. Even things like the relatively inexpensive availability of public transportation in places like that matter. If a person injured in the US is looking at a lifetime of specialized care, and mountains of past medical bills, that’s an expensive proposition, which becomes less expensive in single payer systems.

I say less expensive, but let’s be clear, the cost is the same overall, the paying party is just changed. In Canada, it’s the taxpayer that picks up the tab for malpractice. In the US, it’s the responsible party if the victim does not have the means to pay them themselves. So do we want the responsible party paying for the harm they caused, or do we want all us taxpayers sharing that cost? It’s a philisophical question. Just because Americans FILE claims more often than Canadians doesn’t mean health care is any cheaper there. It may mean simply that the injured party isn’t responsible for the direct cost of resulting damage so the incentive for filing isn’t there. And remember, filed claims don’t equal paid claims.

So simply to say, well, any cost savings is solely attributable to one thing is dangerous. If physicians go that route, they will eventually find people looking at the salaries of Canadian and US physicians and wondering why the difference and perhaps some money could be saved there as well.

You say you think “malpractice reform” would change things, but there are myriad proposed reforms out there now, so without being more specific it’s hard to say. It’s like saying that healthcare reform would save money. Without knowing the specific proposed reform, how can you make that determination?

And while you may be a fan of “health courts”, even if they were not a backdoor version of arbitrary caps, they still have a cost. You’re creating a whole group of experts, judges, staff, etc. at least one in every state if not more, to be paid by the taxpayer rather than the parties to the litigation. And the injured victim and the other party are still going to have lawyers, still going to have insurance, etc. So if you haven’t analyzed those costs, you aren’t being honest about the cost comparison.