MalReformed Malpractice

Malpractice reform can help build a better health system - The Boston Globe: "PRESIDENT OBAMA was on target in his speech to Congress Wednesday when he called for pilot projects to reform medical malpractice. The medical malpractice system is not the eight-cylinder driver of health costs that its most full-throated critics claim it to be, but it is dysfunctional. The overwhelming majority of patients who suffer from physician errors never get any compensation, and the much-publicized cases with million-dollar judgments do not lead to safer, higher-quality care. The Institute of Medicine has estimated that medical errors of all kinds, not just by physicians, cause 98,000 deaths a year..."