Tort Reform Denounced by Harvard Study
May 16, 2006The Harvard University has been getting a lot of play in the media lately. Its been miscontrued and ourtight lied about by politicians pushing for tort refrom. For example, in Oklaoma a politician recently cited the study as saying that 40% of claims are frivilous and this study evidences the need for tort refrom. His assertions are blatenlty false and probably derived to him from his employer when he is not at the capitol, an insurance company.
In reality the study reviewed more than 1,400 medical malpractice cases handled by five insurance companies over a 20-year period (from 1984 to 2004) and found that 40 percent of those lawsuits involved no medical
error."
The study also found that 27% of malpractice cases go unpaid, now how much effect is this having on our tax dollar since these people do need treatment.
As you can see from the article, in actuality "FOR 3% of the 1400 claims studied there were no verifiable medical injuries, and 37% did not involve errors. Most of the claims that were not associated with errors (370 or 515
[72%]) or injuries DID NOT result in compensation."
CONCLUSION: "Claims that lack evidence or error are not uncommon, but MOST ARE DENIED COMPENSATION. The vast majority of expenditures go toward litigation over errors and payment of them."
The Discussion goes on to note that "only a small fraction of claims lacked documented injuries" and of the Claims without merit that were filed, 1 in 4 resulted in payment. When close calls were excluded, claims without
evidence of injury or error accounted for 13% of total litigation costs.
"Our findings point toward two general conclusions. One is that portraits of a malpractice system that is stricken with frivolous litigation ARE OVERBLOWN. A second conclusion is that the malpractice system performs
reasonably well in its function of separating claims without merit from those with merit and compensating the latter. 3/4 of the litigation outcomes were concordant with the merits of the claim."
"Our findings suggest that moves to curb frivolous litigation, if successful, will have a relatively limited effect on the caseload and costs of litigation. The vast majority of resources go toward resolving and paying claims that involve errors. A higher-value target for reform than discouraging claims that do not belong in the system would be streamlining the processing of claims that do belong."
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