Tort Reform Is Not Health Care Reform

The Republicans claim they have a better health care reform plan. The centerpiece of their reform plan is something called "tort reform". This would basically protect doctors and hospitals from being sued when they cause damage to their patients.

Supposedly, it would work something like this -- if we make it illegal to sue them for causing medically serious and sometimes life-threatening mistakes, then they'll happily give us cheap and quality medical care. And if you believe that, I've got some ocean-front property in Amarillo that I'll sell you real cheap.

This doesn't sound like health care reform to me. It sounds more like just another way to screw the poor consumer (who was already paying too much to the offending doctor or hospital).

Here is a good example of why this kind of tort reform would be a terrible idea. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which is normally respected as an excellent hospital, recently overdosed patients with radiation during the process of giving them a CT scan. The error occurred when "the hospital reconfigured a scanner to improve doctors' ability to see blood flow in the brain."

The overdosing started in February of 2008, and was not realized until August of this year when the hospital learned about a patient's hair falling out. By that time, at least 206 patients had been overdosed.

Now one would think that since the fault here lies completely with the hospital, the hospital would immediately notify the patients and offer to take care of any medical bills caused by the error. After all, a radiation overdose could easily result in a life-threatening cancer. So what did the hospital do?

The patients did get a call from a doctor, who asked about any short-term side effects. But the patients were not told they had received an overdose of radiation, or that there could be long-term health problems associated with it. They were also not offered free medical care for any long-term effects.

If this famous hospital would try to hide their culpability, how do you think lesser hospitals would act? Frankly, this kind of thing sounds like what lawsuits are made for -- especially if cancer or other long-term effects do show up.

How would the Republican "tort reform" help these patients? It obviously wouldn't. It would cost these patients thousands of dollars in future medical costs, and very possibly their lives.

That's not my idea of decent health care reform.