Right near the top of the list of “alternatives” to national health care offered by the other side is “tort reform” — limiting the amount injured people can recover or how much their lawyers can be paid. Let’s consider that.
As the other side is always quick to point out, nowhere else in the developed world has this much litigation. Of course, nowhere else is there any such animal as an unpaid medical bill, and support for those who have lost their income tends to be better. People don’t need to find someone else to blame to have their needs taken care of. Other countries don’t have our level of litigation, but, then, they don’t need it.
The liability system is intended to serve two social functions: it pays for the expenses incurred by injured people, and it hopefully helps ease out incompetent professionals.
How does the liability system work as a compensation system? It spends absurd amounts on “overhead” — litigation is expensive — and only succeeds in compensating injured people some of the time. And that’s before we talk about the wastefulness of “defensive medicine.” (It’s not much better at weeding out professional incompetence.) In short, the liability system an inefficient — I’m tempted to use the colloquialism “ass-backwards” — way to fulfill its social functions. But it’s better than nothing.
The problem is that “nothing” is what the Right has in mind. The ones banging the drums loudest for “tort reform” are also the ones least likely to support increased aid for injured people. Instead, they offer only another round of “personal responsibility”: Whatever happens to you is your own fault, they say, and you shouldn’t expect the rest of the community to kick in for your losses. Of course, it helps if you have enough resources to provide for yourself and your family in the first place.
So, yes, we should look at “tort reform” — but only if we’re ready to replace it with a better compensation system. And that’s not really what a lot of the advocates want.
