Tort reform and the health care bill and of course Steve Forbes

It was a lot of fun watching Steve Forbes and Howard Dean  on TV this morning. Fun because I (and speaking only for myself here) don't much like Mr. Forbes who thinks he has a voice by being the son of Malcom and spending $100 million to garner 1% of the vote.  I don't like him because he is a sloganeer..a shill of sorts....and he gets air time with that big goofy airhead grin and it makes me mad.

Howard Dean caught him this morning after Mr. Forbes recited a laundrey list of why health care reform was such a horrible thing and of course he trotted out Tort Reform.  Mr. Dean pounced stating correctly that  Tort Reform is a state issue and for those who hate federalism why would Mr. Forbes want to negate laws in 50 states that deal with Tort Reform and make a federal law that supercedes it?  Mr. Forbes's response was a deer in the headlights gulp.

But let's look so we are clear.  About half the states have enacted Tort Reform dealing with medical malpractice.  You know what? Tort reform does nothng to drive down malpractice suits. Nada. It does allow more doctors into these states and these doctors by  in large get lawsuits at the same rate as doctors living in state without tort reform.  California has very stringent tort reform. The number of suits filed has actually increased.

The over-riding FACT is that about half the malpractice suits filed in any state are against the same 3.5% of the doctors.  In essence, if you want to cut medical malpactice suits in half toss out 3.5% of the doctors in any given state (average numbers...and the difference state by state is fairly substantial).

So we have Mr. Forbes and others wailing about helath care reform because it doesn't have tort reform tied into it.  The worst part of the non-argument argument is that he gets airtime to voice what can only be nicely described as time ill-spent on the issue.