Medical Mythbusters

If John King wanted to confound the GOP candidates for President at last Monday’s debate, he might have asked them to comment on this important post by one of our favorite bloggers, Aaron Carroll, over at The Incidental Economist.

If one talks to physicians (and I do!) it’s clear that that the spectre of malpractice lawsuits looms large in clinical decision making.  Perception or reality?  The closer one gets to the actual cost drivers of health care, the more one sees that tort reform is hardly the money pot of savings hoped for by many on the right.  Carroll calls this “meme busting” and he has a few other memes in his crosshairs, including the belief that our extra-high spending is driven by an extra-unhealthy population.  As it turns out, not so much….

What are some other memes you’ve confronted in your career that you would like to see examined? 

One that occurs to me would be our over-reliance on specialists.  Is it a utilization problem… or do we just pay too much?

(Would it surprise you to learn that in Washington we see things a little differently?  The much maligned “trial lawyers” at which the GOP loves to take aim also constitute one of the Democrats’ largest source of big-money donors.  To dramatically limit damages through tort reform would have the effect of shutting this money source off at the tap.)