No one will deny for one moment that the issue of medical insurance is an important one, and one that we’re trying desperately as a nation to come to grips with. All sides in the medical insurance reform debate can become very passionate about what they believe, and it can lead to a very heated debate. While the various sides and interest groups fight it out, and try to decide whether a socialized system or a market system is best for the country, there are some things that most folks will agree on that could help.

The problem of malpractice suits

One of those things is the area of medical malpractice lawsuits. For decades, we’ve heard stories about people faking injuries and getting millions of dollars, or about people who are injured due to their own negligence yet still wind up with a huge insurance settlement. These kinds of suits drive up the costs of medical insurance, and they drive up the costs of health care in general as doctors face rapidly increasing malpractice costs.

One of the ways that these malpractice suits increase the costs of health care and medical insurance is through unnecessary tests. In many cases, physicians are forced to practice “defensive medicine.” This means, basically, that they’re afraid of being taken to court because of a missed diagnosis, so they order testing that they otherwise might not order.

How much do these tests really wind up costing? Some experts think that defensive medicine adds around $100 billion or more to national health care costs. Eliminate that, and you’re talking about a huge savings.

An easy fix

The solution to this is a relatively simple one: change the rules of how malpractice suits are brought. This is known as “tort reform,” and it could help to make medical insurance more affordable for many folks. In fact, some analysts suggest that simple tort reform would help to greatly reduce the costs of health care, and thereby reduce the costs of medical insurance.

This doesn’t even take into consideration the cost savings that health care providers would have from reduced malpractice insurance costs. Added together, these two simple reforms could save the average person hundreds of dollars per year in medical insurance costs.

While tort reform won’t fix the system in its entirety, folks of many different political persuasions believe that it should probably be included as at least one piece in the overall puzzle.

Photo via borman818