This is tough

[fishbones]

Originally Posted by PaulS

how many employees does your company employee?

Everything I read says that tort reform is a small % of insurance comp. expenses.

The tort reform piece directly relates to malpractice insurance costs for medical providers. Malpractice insurance has gone through the roof and a lot of that is due to fraudulent lawsuits. Doctors, etc... have to raise their costs in order to make money to pay back huge student loans and to operate their business.

That being said, there still has to be better regulation of costs. A procedure that costs $500 for one patient should not cost $1,000 for another patient just because they have a better insurance plan. And prescription drugs are even worse.

[Jim in CT]

Tort reform would decrease healthcare costs in 2 ways. First, the doctors would pay less for malpractice insurance, a savings they could pass on to us. More significantly, doctors would feel less pressure to practice so much defensive medicine. Today,m if you tell your doc you have a headache, he may order an MRI and a cat scan to cover himself from being sued. In a reasonable world, if he wasn't so afraid of being sued, he'd give you 2 asprin.

I'm not sure how else you significantly cut costs. In my opinion (reasonable folks can disagree) docs deserve to make a good living, it takes a lot to become a doctor, and they don't start making money until they're in their 30's, and they have tons of debt.

It's a very complicated problem, I don't pretend to have the answer. What I do know is that Obamacare will not, can not, lower costs.