[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

i'd say different mookie.

Doctors do practice medicine - constantly in "CYOA" mode.

According to the actuarial consulting firm Towers Perrin, medical malpractice tort costs were $30.4 billion in 2007, the last year for which data are available. We have a more than a $2 trillion health care system. That puts litigation costs and malpractice insurance at 1 to 1.5 percent of total medical costs.

...

“It’s really just a distraction,” said Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and author of “The Medical Malpractice Myth.” “If you were to eliminate medical malpractice liability, even forgetting the negative consequences that would have for safety, accountability, and responsiveness, maybe we’d be talking about 1.5 percent of health care costs. So we’re not talking about real money. It’s small relative to the out-of-control cost of health care.”

Insurance costs about $50-$60 billion a year, Baker estimates. As for what’s often called “defensive medicine,” “there’s really no good study that’s been able to put a number on that,” said Baker.

...

A 1996 study in Florida found defensive medicine costs could be as high as 5 to 7 percent. But when the same authors went back a few years later, they found that managed care had brought it down to 2.5 to 3.5 percent of the total.

http://washingtonindependent.com/555...lth-care-costs

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.c...th-care-costs/

I prefer to deal with data and facts.

Limiting the relief that people can seek from bad doctors is bad policy. The only tool we have to weed out bad doctors and hold them accountable is bringing malpractice charges against them.