“Wasting Billions, Doing Injustice”

Stuart Taylor, Jr. on the need for malpractice reform:

Whatever the number, surveys of doctors and anecdotal evidence — even allowing for self-serving exaggeration — suggest that the occurrence [of defensive medicine] is high. A stunning 93 percent of Pennsylvania specialists in high-risk fields admitted practicing defensive medicine, according to a 2005 survey by the Journal of the American Medical Association. So did 83 percent of high-risk specialists in a 2008 Massachusetts Medical Society survey. That study also found that respondents’ fear of liability accounted for almost 30 percent of the CT scans and MRIs they ordered and had spurred 28 percent of them (including 44 percent of OB-GYNs) to avoid treating high-risk patients. …

Similar considerations explain why we already have specialized courts without juries for vaccine liability, workers’ compensation, bankruptcy, and tax cases.

(cross-posted from Point of Law)

October 2 roundup