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The problem currently is that there can be huge damage awards in cases where there was little or no malpractice. Example: OBGYNS typically pay a couple hundred thousand a year for insurance, because anytime there's a flaw in a newly-born baby, there's both a strong emotional tempation and a strong financial incentive to blame the doctor and sue. Even in unclear cases, juries have a hard time resisting the "Robin Hood" impulse, figuring the "rich" doctor can take the hit, especially when they know that insurance is paying part or most of the tab. (Usually, the doctor has to pay a deductible.) Some doctors are quite wealthy, but contrary to popular opinion, the ones that specialize in primary care (family doctors) or rural-based practices are not very wealthy, especially if they are working for an HMO or other provider.
If you're female, you already know what kind of problems this situation is creating - OBGYNS are in short supply in many areas, because doctors can't/won't pay the huge premiums, and don't want the risk of being sued and marring their professional record. So they choose another, less-litigious branch of medicine. The ones that do stay run all kinds of unneeded tests and create elaborate, time-consuming paper trails, to fend off potential legal problems. The amount of time and money that is wasted on this kind of stuff is astounding. This is true not only of OBGYNs but of all branches of medicine, now.
The waste is so prevalent that, were we able to eliminate it, we could give free coverage to the 40 million uninsured Americans with the savings. So the consequences are huge.
I'm happy to see both compensatory and punitive awards in cases of actual malpractice, and don't want that to stop. I do not support caps, either. But something has to be done. Unfortunately, many frivolous (or to be charitable, mistaken) cases are brought to court because there's very little downside to suing. You find a lawyer willing to work on contingency (typically a third of the award, sometimes more), and try your luck. If nothing comes of it, so what? It's rather like going to Vegas.
Meanwhile, the damage awards are absorbed by the medical economy as another cost of doing business. That means some people who would have had health insurance have to do without, because either they or their employer can no longer afford it. The rest of us get stuck paying fourteen dollars for an aspirin in our hospital room that costs a thousand dollars a day.
In short, the real world consequences of huge damage awards against doctors who did little or no wrong are that everyone gets socked with bigger bills, and some people either get sick or die because they are no longer on a healthcare plan.
What we need is a way to weed out the frivolous or mistaken suits. Maybe something like they have in Britain - the loser of the suit has to cover some or all of the winner's legal costs. Or maybe something else. I don't have the answer, but I look forward to the public debate over this in the hope that someone else does.
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