Healthcare and Tort Reform

For those of us who remember HillaryCare in 1993, it was a bitter pill for the design and construction industry to swallow.

To refresh your memory, shortly after Bill Clinton was sworn in as President in 1993, he asked his wife to lead a task force charged with overhauling the nation’s healthcare insurance system. The goal was to provide universal healthcare to all Americans. He recognized that the spiraling costs of healthcare were unsustainable and compromised our economic prosperity.

During the months of debate that followed, the healthcare industry held its collective breath, anticipating draconian legislative reforms. Institutions were hesitant to commit funds to upgrade their facilities and the healthcare design industry was “on hold” for more than a year and a half. In the end, despite the administration’s good intentions, the bipartisan compromise bill went down to defeat in September, 1994, and things largely returned to the status quo. Not surprisingly, healthcare costs for the average American have continued to rise ever since.

Fast forward to today. President Obama recently made a pledge eerily similar to President Clinton’s. This time around, two things concern me: First, I hope that the political debate is brief and that the bill is enacted promptly so our industry does not suffer unnecessarily. Second, I hope that Obama’s healthcare reform has at its core one essential ingredient that Clinton was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to deliver – tort reform. Now, I am not suggesting that tort reform alone will cure our healthcare ills. Rationing end of life care, controlling obesity, promoting wellness, and eliminating unnecessary paperwork and inefficiencies may all contribute more to healthcare’s bottom line than tort reform. But, I believe that tort reform will have a more beneficial ripple effect throughout our entire economy.

There are several components of tort reform that merit consideration: the elimination of contingent fees, capping damage awards, and my personal favorite – the “loser pays” system – from English law. I believe that if just these three reforms were adopted, malpractice insurance costs would drop, frivolous lawsuits would decline, and physicians would be less likely to insist on expensive diagnostics of questionable medical merit.

Healthcare reform without tort reform just won’t be easy for me to swallow!