[Retric]

> purely to avoid lawsuits.

That time has real benefits. Medicine has a huge issue where people value their own lives vastly more than doctors do. Sure, 99+% of the time X is not the issue, but it’s rational to spend quite a bit to avoid fairly low odds of death.

For example, one of the US’s top killers is pulmonary embolism which presents as any number of other issues. Doctors not taking such symptoms seriously kills. “Pulmonary embolism is a common complication of hospitalization and contrib- utes to 5 to 10 percent of deaths in hospitalized patients.” “less than half of patients who die of pulmonary embolism were diagnosed with the problem prior to death“

[kgwgk]

> it’s rational to spend quite a bit to avoid fairly low odds of death

Then it’s not rational to be outraged when one finds out that healthcare costs are high.

[Retric]

Plenty of other things boost the US’s heathcare costs to get upset about. Texas capped malpractice liability and that seemed to have zero impact on heathcare costs.

[spacemanmatt]

There seems to be a presumption that "to avoid lawsuits" is a pure motivation. I don't think that it is.

Some of our laws actually come from just causes, such as protection patients from incompetence, malfeasance, etc. of their physicians, nurses, hospitalers, and insurance companies. A lawsuit is the necessary enforcement mechanism of such protections. Lawsuits can serve good purposes.