I’m cutting and pasting; forgive me if I offend you, and ignore.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/105599.php
“The authors believe this is caused by neurosurgeons restricting their practices to limit malpractice liability. This means that additional neurosurgeons are needed in the same geographic area to cover the spectrum of diseases and surgical needs of the population. In other words, two neurosurgeons are now needed to perform the job that used to be performed by one.”
>This would be expensive.<
http://overlawyered.com/2009/09/canada-keeps-malpractice-cost-in-check/:
Susan Taylor Martin in the St. Petersburg Times has some striking numbers:
“For neurosurgeons in Miami, the annual cost of medical malpractice insurance is astronomical — $237,000, far more than the median price of a house.
In Toronto, a neurosurgeon pays about $29,200 for coverage. It’s even less in Montreal ($20,600) and Vancouver ($10,650).
Among the reasons why: in 1978 the Canadian Supreme Court imposed (on its own) nationwide limits on pain-and-suffering recoveries, adjusted for inflation and now just over $300,000. A single mutual insurer covers most doctors and takes an aggressive approach to defending claims. Most cases are tried before judges. Billboard and TV advertising by lawyers is much less prevalent in Canada. And so forth — all aside from the loser-pays principle.”
>As we found out when that actress fell and bumped her head on the ski slope a couple years ago, the Canadian doctors probably aren’t expected to do as much either, as they are unlikely to have the tools like MRI at their beck and call, let alone medevac helicopters.<
> I’m cutting and pasting; forgive me if I offend you, and ignore.
Not at all, I’m always up for additional information, as long as it factual, and not just some pundroid (mis)repeating something he or she thinks they heard somewhere, I’ve been reading widely on these topics for years, and one problem is the “Bulkinization” of discussion - people become convinced that *this* is the problem or the solution - when in fact the HCS is composed of a lot of various systems and actors, which often interact in very un-intuitive ways.
So the wider your reading (as long as you are careful not to become an un-reflective partisan of this or that sort of political or economic idealism), the better off you are.
One reason the Canadian system has lower “insurance” costs to providers is that medical and disability insurance to consumers covers more of treatment needed to correct medical errors, especially as as compared to un/under insured individuals in the US.
This is a good example of the sort of trade-offs I was discussing above: “universal coverage” and more comprehensive long-term disability coverage (without the the necessity to radically spend down assets to qualify for Medicad, as in the US) makes it both economically and politically possible more readily limit individual legal recourse against providers.
For political and cultural reasons, many US voters find this an unacceptable solution.
But as Canada experience demonstrates, its not an inherently impractical alternative.