Thank you for the Feb. 27 front-page article on much-needed medical liability reform in North Carolina ("Doctors could get more protection from lawsuits").
Defensive medicine is a real, widespread and enormously expensive problem. Nationally, three-fourths of doctors say they order extra medical tests and procedures simply to avoid frivolous lawsuits. Every North Carolinian pays for this excess through higher costs of medical insurance and taxpayer-funded medical programs for the poor.
State and national medical tort reform would help reduce the public's health care costs by billions of dollars while improving patient access to health care, especially in underserved rural areas, according to numerous government authorities and academic scholars who have studied the issue.
Under a bill being considered in the General Assembly, Senate Bill 33, injured patients still would recover every penny of their medical expenses and all losses of future income. And they could get up to half a million more dollars in "noneconomic damages" for subjective, unmeasurable harms such as pain and suffering.
Limiting the amount plaintiffs who sue doctors can win for noneconomic damages is hardly radical. More than half the states have some kind of limit, many at the much lower threshold of $250,000.
The independent, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says national tort reform would save American taxpayers $54 billion over the next decade, while boosting government tax revenue by $13 billion.
In December, the bipartisan federal budget deficit commission, co-chaired by North Carolina's Erskine Bowles, strongly endorsed tort reform and urged Congress to consider enacting "an aggressive set of reforms to the tort system" including a nationwide cap on noneconomic damages, which it estimated could save $17 billion by 2020.
In addition, the new federal budget proposed by President Obama, a progressive Democrat lawyer, includes $100 million in federal grants to encourage states to experiment with tort reforms - because the president knows they're needed.
SB 33's details are evolving as it moves through the legislature, as is customary. But enacting strong, sensible tort reform this session is essential to help reduce defensive medicine, lower health care costs, and improve patient access to health care across North Carolina.
Stephen W. Keene
General Counsel, Deputy Executive Vice President
N.C. Medical Society
Raleigh
The length limit was waived.
