Study: tort reform has not cut health care costs in Texas

A new study found no evidence that health care costs in Texas dipped after a 2003 constitutional amendment limited payouts in medical malpractice lawsuits, despite claims made to voters by some backers of tort reform.

The researchers, who include University of Texas law professor Charles Silver, examined Medicare spending in Texas counties and saw no reduction in doctors' fees for seniors and disabled patients between 2002 and 2009. A 2003 voter campaign in Texas, and some congressional backers of Texas-style tort reform in every state, however, argued that capping damage awards would not onlycurb malpractice lawsuits and insurance costs for doctors, it would lower costs for patients while boosting their access to physicians.

Tort reform is a controversial topic likely to be resurrected by Republicans and doctors' groups who hoped to make it part of the 2010 federal health care law.

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The researchers' findings come after a report last fall in which the Ralph Nader-founded consumer group Public Citizen said it found Medicare spending in Texas rose much faster than the national average after tort reform. Critics of that study said that tort reform leaders never promised health care spending would decline and noted that caps on damage awards brought steep drops in malpractice insurance rates for doctors and large increases in new doctors coming to Texas.

Another study yet to be published on physician supply and tort reform, also by Silver's group, agrees that malpractice suits and payouts sharply dropped after tort reform. But that study strongly disputes claims of a mass exodus of Texas doctors before tort reform and huge increases afterward.

On the question of health care costs, Silver's group focused on the federal government's Medicare program, which makes up 20 percent of the $2.5 trillion spent on U.S. health care.

That group — consisting of two Republicans, a Democrat and a foreign national, according to the researchers — analyzed data at the county level in Texas, said Tom Baker, author of a 2005 book, "The Medical Malpractice Myth," and a professor of law and health sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

"This is a very highly regarded study, and this team is highly regarded," Baker said. The study was paid for by the researchers' universities, Silver said, and the paper was published this month in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

"Their results didn't surprise me at all," Baker said.

[read full story at Statesman.com here]

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source: Statesman (Roser, 6/20)