Obamacare will make Medical Malpractice Lawyers very rich men!!

H/T NY Daily News

Without real Tort Reform Obamacare will cause our Medical System to go bankrupt! We all know that Trail Lawyers are Obama’s top political donors, so the chance of Obama pushing for Malpractice Reform will be ZERO!

Obamacare will fail without tort reform: Malpractice insurance costs are crippling medicine

By Dr. Michael Lavyne

Friday, November 19, 2010, 4:00 AM

I am what you call a successful neurosurgeon, and I have nothing against "socialized medicine" as such. Everybody deserves good health care. But I am nonetheless worried about President Obama's health care reform, because without tort reform as part of the package, it can't address the labor shortage we face in my specialty.

Tort reform is crucial because it would curtail the threat of frivolous malpractice lawsuits, reward all patients who have been injured by medical mishaps, not just the wealthy with access to high-powered lawyers - and reduce the anxieties faced by young doctors going into medicine in the first place, especially those entering high-stakes fields like my own.

For example, I just operated on a 60-year old man who didn't even know his surgery was an emergency. He was losing motor function in his lower extremities due to severe spinal stenosis, and we were able to move quickly because we were free of insurance issues. But what if those insurance issues were paramount? What if somebody like me wasn't available, to anybody, because the supply of neurosurgeons had dried up - because the costs of letting them operate were too high? Would he still be walking?

Good doctors have always been in short supply; why worry especially about neurosurgery?

Only because spinal problems affect nearly 80% of our aging population: It's one of the most common reasons patients visit a primary care physician, right behind the yearly physical, the common cold, prenatal care and anxiety-related disorders. Baby boomers are about to overwhelm the system with demand for treatment of spinal problems - including surgery - at precisely the moment the supply of neurosurgeons able to treat them is dwindling.

How could this have happened? How could we have a labor shortage in one of the most lucrative, prestigious and desperately needed medical specialties?

One reason is the difficulty of getting certified, which makes sense. In May of 2009, the American Board of Neurological Surgeons certified 59 individuals as capable of tasks required of their specialty. But only about 30% of them, just 18 people, were ready to perform the surgeries that might solve the spinal problems of an aging population. The average age of these people was 37, they all carried loans from medical school and malpractice insurance premiums they faced were about $4.5 million a year if they settled in this state.

Thus we come to the second reason: the cost of malpractice insurance, which creates a very high cost of entry into this field. Unfortunately, the health care reforms of the Obama administration have done little to curb costs. These costs are imposed by hospital inefficiencies as unpoliced by government-run insurance plans and by the price of malpractice insurance undisciplined by tort reform.

I believe that tort reform is the key to reducing both kinds of cost, because the malignant threat of malpractice haunts the hospitals as well as the physicians. Without such reform, the choice for practicing neurosurgeons like me is between retirement and working 24/7 just to cover my insurance overhead. My premature retirement will reduce the supply of surgeons capable of dealing with the spinal problems of an aging population - and that supply is already short and getting shorter. Meanwhile, a few more board-certified surgeons a year won't meet the growing demand. The lines at your doctor's office could get long.

When Congress returns to consider the problem of health care, it must understand that without tort reform, neurosurgery of the kind I can provide to an aging population will be unavailable.

Lavyne is Clinical Professor of Neurological Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University in New York City.