Reply #41: You are right, defensiveness is sometimes justified.

[cbayer]

I greatly appreciate your thoughtful response and will respectfully agree to disagree.

I have a different perspective based on my personal experience. It's not just the malpractice insurance costs or settlement amounts. It's the demoralizing, career ruining impact of an unfounded suit. It's the impact on how physicians practice. And defensive medicine (one of those cases where defensiveness may well be justified) is not an efficient, effective or moral way to practice medicine.

I agree wholeheartedly that the insurance industry bears the bulk of the responsibility for the financial mess, but just fixing that will not address the overreaching failures of the entire system.

And certainly if we were going to have group of people who were going to look at overhauling the entire system, you would want the trial lawyers at the table.