Malpractice Payments Fall

Fewer medical malpractice payments were made on behalf of doctors in 2009 than any year on record, according to the National Practitioner Data Bank. A total of 10,772 payments were made on behalf of physicians in 2009, totaling $3.49 billion. Sounds like a lot, but we spent $2.5 trillion on healthcare in 2009. If we eliminated all payments for malpractice, we'd have saved 0.14 of one percent of what we spent. And some patients who had been badly harmed would have received nothing.

Between 2000 and 2009, healthcare spending is up 83 percent, while medical malpractice payments fell eight percent (both figures in unadjusted dollars). With malpractice reform one of the Republican Party's few ideas for reforming the health system, this report only confirms the bankruptcy of ideas from that side of the Congressional aisle.