Sunday, August 2, 2009

The Best Way to FIX Health Care.....

TORT Reform.....:http://docisinblog.com/index.php/2009/07/27/texas-tort-reform/
From the post :Read the rest at the link above:

The changes to medical liability in 2003 were extraordinary, and had a very substantial impact, including:

1. In August 2004, the Texas Hospital Association reported a 70% reduction in the number of lawsuits filed against the state’s hospitals.
2. Medical liability insurance rates declined. Many doctors saw average rate reductions of over 21%, with some doctors seeing almost 50% decreases. (Recent information provided to The Perryman Group during the course of this study suggests that premiums are declining even further in 2008.)
3. Beginning in 2003, physicians started returning to Texas. The Texas Medical Board reports licensing 10,878 new physicians since 2003, up from 8,391 in the prior four years. Perryman has determined that at least 1,887 of those physicians are specifically the result of lawsuit reform.
4. In May 2006, the American Medical Association removed Texas from its list of states experiencing a liability crisis, marking the first time it has removed any state from the list. A recent survey by the Texas Medical Association also found a dramatic increase in physicians’ willingness to resume certain procedures they had stopped performing, including obstetrics, neurosurgical, radiation and oncological procedures.

Last year, TLR commissioned a study by The Perryman Group to figure out the impact of these reforms (the above are excerpted from that report). Here are the economic impact findings of that study:

$112.5 billion increase in annual spending
$51.2 billion increase in annual output – goods and services produced in Texas
$2.6 billion increase in annual state tax revenue
$468.9 million in annual benefits from safer products
$15.2 billion in annual net benefits of enhanced innovation
499,000 permanent jobs
430,000 additional Texans have health insurance today as a result of the medical liability reforms

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