wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:27:25 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

Bear in mind "congress" is mostly lawyers so I am skeptical about how
they slice these numbers. I can find you a lot of articles from the
medical side that say torts are a huge problem.

2004 - http://www.factcheck.org/article133.html
2006 -
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/71xx/doc7...alpractice.pdf
2008 -
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?...entID=2 54574
2010 (June) - http://www.nber.org/aginghealth/fall04/w10709.html

Feel free to dispute these at your leisure..


These guys will give you plenty of arguments
http://www.instituteforlegalreform.com/
http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/20...law1-0706.html
http://www.webmd.com/news/20020626/a...ractice-crisis
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/39/14/20.full



These organizations' pages only seem to peripherally argue about the
costs.
None cite actual numbers.


The "numbers" the lawyers cite do not encompass the real costs.
they talk about things like awards in torts without including the
lawyers fees and nobody really knows what the real cost of defensive
medicine is but simply the number of procedures and tests in a US
treatment for a particular condition compared to what the rest of the
western world would have points to something strange going on.

Typically lawyers don't charge upfront for negligence cases. They're paid at
the end.. 30-40%. If know one knows the "real" costs, then you can't claim
they're significant to the over all health cost.