• 15
  • July
    2011

A new study by the non-profit citizen group Public Citizen, which analyzed data from the National Practitioner Data Bank, shows that medical malpractice payouts have dropped every year for the past seven years and have now hit an all-time low. Furthermore, the cumulative value of the payouts in 2010, adjusted for inflation, was the lowest on record, and in actual dollars they were the lowest since 1998.

Therefore, Public Citizen concludes, the cost of medical malpractice lawsuits simply cannot be the cause for the recent and ongoing increases in the cost of healthcare coverage.

Congressional lawmakers who are advocating for passage of the "Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-Cost, Timely Healthcare Act of 2011" have written their bill on the assumption that the cost of medical malpractice lawsuits is to blame for rising health care costs. The bill seeks to put a $250,000 federal cap on noneconomic compensatory damages and limit any single party's percentage of responsibility to compensate medical malpractice victims for their losses -- typically death, catastrophic harm, or serious, permanent injuries.

Public Citizen's analysis of data also shows that:

  • In the past ten years, healthcare spending rose by 90 percent, but medical malpractice payouts fell by 11.9 percent
  • 2010 medical malpractice payouts made up just over one-tenth of one percent of health care costs nationwide, the lowest percentage on record
  • The total cost of medical malpractice litigation fell in 2009 to less than one-half of one percent of total health costs, the lowest level since the databank's inception

The research director for Public Citizen's Congress Watch Division points out that the real crisis is in medical malpractice, not medical malpractice lawsuits. The number of lawsuits is declining, but the number of tragic medical errors has not gone down.

"Trying to stop people from being compensated for catastrophic injuries is not the answer," he said. "We should instead concentrate on making hospitals safer and disciplining doctors who repeatedly commit malpractice."

Founded in 1971, Public Citizen was conceived to act as a lobbyist organization to represent the interests of the citizens of the United States before Congress.

Source: Public Citizen press release, "Malpractice Payments Plummeted in 2010: New Data Show Health Care Costs Are Not Linked to Lawsuits," May 24, 2011