Howard Dean unleashed a flood of commentary critical of the litigation industry when, at Rep. Jim Moran’s town hall, he explained that Congress had left any tort reform provisions out of health care legislation because members did not want to……

Former Senator Bill Bradley proposes an Obamacare compromise: “Tax Reform’s Lesson for Health Care Reform” [NY Times]. One critic gloats/scoffs that Republicans aren’t serious about malpractice reform except as an opposition issue since they didn…

Three quarters is not 98%. I was impressed by Peter Huber’s work in “Galileo’s Revenge” where he covers fetal stress cases and the anti-nausea medicine cases. Then there were the breast implant cases and of course the horrific Levine case. Daubert deals directly with incompetence of juries.

I’d like to know what you base your “abundantly clear” conclusion on. Last I looked, a 2006 Harvard Medical School study found juries generally (about three-fourths of the time) found, or did not find, negligence in the same circumstances in which a panel of experts would. There’s no evidence (or sensible argument) that shifting to a different fact-finder, like a judge, arbitrator, or court-appointed panel, would do any better.

“Conservatives are no help in this regard: most blindly adopt any ‘reform’ that appears anti-plaintiff, regardless of the merits.”

It is abundantly clear that juries generally are incompetent with respect to medical matters. It was the Levine decision that blindly celebrated the prerogative of juries to find facts that weren’t there.

I am not a conservative, but I know of no tort reform proposals without solid argument.

Take Dean’s “non-binding, but admissible arbitration” example. I don’t know of a single lawyer (of any political persuasion) who agrees with that since (1) it violates the basic legal principle that a later factfinder should not be tainted by prior findings and (2) it’s unclear what, if anything, it would do except add more delay and more costs to the process.

Conservatives are no help in this regard: most blindly adopt any “reform” that appears anti-plaintiff, regardless of the merits.

I’m not really sure what P is asserting here. I cannot speak with knowledge of Georgia law, but I believe in an ordinary fraud case against a doctor (say, over fraudulent billing) there would be no right to recover damages for pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, etc., so there is nothing to cap. Perhaps P would care to elucidate.