Friday, May 30, 2008

Saving Medical Care with Tort Reform

By Donald R. May

Categories: Texas

While most politicians are busying themselves with band-aid fixes for the health care and trial lawyer problems they and their predecessors created, Texas has been fixing the problems. Self-sufficient Texans have looked squarely at the issues and enacted significant tort reform.

This tort reform has lessened the financial burdens on physicians, many companies, and the insurance industry. This has been an excellent move in the right direction. A column that recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal, "Why Doctors Are Heading for Texas," (subscriber link) is worth reading. The author, Joseph Nixon, championed the tort reforms as a member of the Texas House of Representatives.

As a result of recent reforms in the state, the economy of Texas has been doing remarkably well. Physicians are coming to Texas in record numbers, malpractice and personal injury cases are way down, insurance savings have been very significant, and the greedy trial lawyers will hopefully shy away.

These changes in the Texas civil justice system have slowed legal abuses and protected physicians and hospitals. Other tort reform has successfully eliminated more than 99% of the asbestos and silicosis litigation by requiring reasonable burdens of proof before litigation can proceed.