Man, bestselling authors of widely respected books on health policy shouldn't be getting this sort of stuff so flagrantly wrong. Particularly when it plays into the right wing's patiently constructed narrative of malpractice crisis. As it happens, not only does Kate have it right that malpractice awards are far larger in other countries than they are here, but we throw out far more malpractice cases than do other systems, the growth in malpractice payments has been a comparatively anemic 5% (while other countries have been above 10%), and the whole racket ends up a paltry .46% of total health care costs (I summarized the study in question here).
Now, there's no doubt that we could use some malpractice reform in this country, but it's a low urgency question of tweaks. The folks who really need to be regulated are insurance companies who, for reasons of undercapitalization, poor decisions, and losses in other areas of revenue have begun torquing doctors to boost the bottom line. That's why there's such enormous regional variations in costs -- because the driving forces are neither patients nor juries, but insurance companies and the individual situations they find themselves in.
Man, wouldn't it be great if the insurer for all this was the non-profit federal government, like it is elsewhere, who has no interest in gouging doctors and worsening care countrywide? But wait, wait, that'd be socialism, and for a variety of totally unexplained reasons, that'd be bad.
