
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, September 9, 1994                   TAG: 9409210030
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TORT REFORM

WHATEVER hodgepodge health-care reform, if any, lawmakers come up with when they return to Washington, they shouldn't allow one critical and largely overlooked component - tort reform - to be lost in the lobbying storm.

This shouldn't be an afterthought in the long string of things that need fixing in the nation's health-care system. Rest assured, it remains very much on the minds of trial lawyers and their lobbyists.

Lawyers, who are often good at arguing, make an effective point when they insist that those who have suffered grievous injury at the hands of an incompetent, uncaring or negligent physician must have recourse to seek compensation that at least begins to approach the losses they have suffered. Granted.

But doctors must have the ability to practice good medicine even though, sometimes, they will make mistakes. And they must be able to do this at a price the public can afford. Today, the price is inflated not only by the cost of malpractice insurance, but, more significantly, by the sometimes excessive and unnecessary tests and procedures ordered by doctors practicing defensive medicine with the courts, more than patients, in mind.

American medicine today is the best it has ever been, the best in the world. Yet lawsuits against doctors have risen 1,000 percent since 1984, and medical liability costs have been increasing at four times the rate of inflation. Of those billions being spent, only 40 cents on the dollar actually goes to injured patients. Trial lawyers get one-third to half of awards.

No one will argue that the family of the otherwise healthy young man who undergoes minor surgery and is left brain dead by the anesthetic shouldn't be compensated, as much as money can compensate for the loss of a loved one. But the statistics support what one senses in the fearful caution pervading the normal conduct of everyday life: One misstep, pal, and someone's going to sue the pants off of you.

In a risk-free America, costs go up and enterprise declines. All too readily these days, if something goes wrong, someone must be to blame, and he or she had better expect to pay dearly for it. In the end, we all pay dearly for it.

by CNB