Greedy Trial Lawyer
Doctors Are Practicing "Defense-of-Income Medicine"
Category: Seeing Clearly Now
A special thanks to Doc Advocate for a better explanation for defensive medicine. In its recent post we are reminded that the Congressional Budget Office has suggested that its studies do not support fear of frivolous lawsuits as the true cause of supposedly unnecessary testing. Rather, the CBO nominates income generation for doctors as a more likely cause.
What we have, apparently, is defense-of-income medicine.
Medical malpractice reform has been the source of heated debate, but there's little data about the impact of frivolous lawsuits on health care costs -- though they're frequently cited as a major cause of health care cost inflation.The powerful American Medical Association, which represents doctors, cites statistics indicating the fear of malpractice claims has caused nearly 80 percent of doctors to order tests they otherwise wouldn't have.
But the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the General Accounting Office and the Kaiser Family Foundation say there is little evidence to support that claim.
"Defensive medicine may be motivated less by liability concerns than by the income it generates for physicians or by the positive, albeit small, benefits to patients," the CBO said in a 2004 briefing.
"On the basis of existing studies and its own research, CBO believes that savings from reducing defensive medicine would be very small."
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.greedytriallawyer.com/admin/mt-tb.cgi/318