Medical Malpractice Payments Continue to Fall
More evidence revealing that rising health care costs have nothing to do with medical malpractice lawsuits and that changing the liability system will do nothing to curb costs, but will be deterimental to injured patients and their families. The National Practitioner Data Bank has recently reported that fewer medical malpractice payments were made on behalf of doctors in 2009 than any year on record.
The value of malpractice payments was also the lowest since 1999. Adjusted for inflation, payments were at their lowest since 1992, a Public Citizen analysis of the NPDB shows.
According to the analysis, healthcare spending rose 83 percent from 2000-09, while medical malpractice payments fell 8 percent (both figures are in unadjusted dollars.)
