During my many years of academic medical administration, I learned that a successful decision where there were opposing factions was often one in which no one party was particularly happy with the outcome. This observation is probably true for most political compromises, including the recently enacted Obama healthcare reform act. On the left of the political spectrum, many advocates, including myself, were dissatisfied that the resulting law did not provide all Americans with universal healthcare coverage. At the other end of the political rainbow, conservatives were unhappy with the provision that required individuals to buy health insurance. However, in my view the most important deficit in our new healthcare legislation was the failure to address the 800-pound gorilla sitting squarely in the middle of the US healthcare system: the need for tort reform. The current medical liability environment in the United States has resulted in the widespread practice of defensive medicine, which in turn has led to staggering volumes of unnecessary diagnostic testing, often accompanied by both potential clinical complications and gigantically inflated healthcare costs.
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— Joseph S. Alpert, MD, editor-in-chief, American Journal of Medicine
This article originally appeared in the March 2011 issue of The American Journal of Medicine.
