Proposal for Medical Liability Reform

Medical malpractice has often been front page news during the last two decades, especially when liability premiums soared in both the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s. While a sense of uneasy calm has recently settled over the system, this has occurred at levels of litigation and premiums that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago. And past experience offers no assurance that even the present equilibrium will last. Physicians' concerns about the problem extend beyond the burden of rising insurance premiums in a period of health care cost containment. Just as important, if not more so, are the emotional stress of public suit and trial and the erosion of trusting relationships with patients. Such sentiments have sent physicians to the statehouses for legislation that has made malpractice law the cutting edge of tort reform generally. (May 6, 1992)