Tort Reform Leads to Poor Patient Care

Jeanie Oliver

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Texas was used as the model child for the proponents of tort reform. However over the past few years Texas and other states that have enacted tort reform laws have been shown to have poorer healthcare systems.

Research has shown that 69% of the states that put limits on patients' access to the courts to hold the medical profession accountable have the the poorest overall healthcare systems. It is only logical that once any entity is no longer called to be responsible for their decisions, then they are more likely to place profitability over top-level performance.
Back to the Lonestar State- Texas now ranks 49th out of 50 in overall healthcare system performance. In this state as well as others who were convinced that tort reform and caps on medical liability damages have resulted in a trend that is resulting in poorer health care especially for patients without access to private insurance. This means that the patients with less choices in their medical care are the ones most significantly hurt.
The end result of this phenomenon is that insurance and medical lobbyists are enabling a rising epidemic of medical errors to once again go unpunished.
The Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit research foundation, has published a report that compares states with caps for legal settlements and their level of medical care. For more information about this report, go to www.texaswatch.org.