[throwawaydbdksn]

I don't need to make an argument. Call your doctor and ask him how much he pays for his malpractice insurance.

I used to know some people in healthcare tangentially and the answer is $50,000 to $250,000 A YEAR depending on specialty etc.

Sometimes the practice will pay these costs for you, so the doctor might not be paying it directly but the money is coming from somewhere.

My friends told me malpractice insurance was generally about a third of your salary. And this includes people like pharmacists and physicians assistants too. So if much higher than world average doctor salaries in the US are any part of the reason for high medical costs, lawsuits are a third of that

[ubernostrum]

I used to know some people in healthcare tangentially and the answer is $50,000 to $250,000 A YEAR depending on specialty etc.

And... inflates at a rate which appears to be completely unrelated to malpractice damage awards. So calling for caps and limits on malpractice suits would not solve it.

[gech]

Consumers need protection from doctor's mistakes, plain and simple. I don't need to make an argument either. Call someone who has lost their child to a doctor's mistake.

[zepto]

Consumers pay for this so-called protection through higher costs, but what good does it do?

Call a person who has lost their child to a doctors mistake and see how the 'protection' has worked out for them.