Medical Malpractice and the U.S. Health Care System

Medical malpractice lawsuits are common and controversial in the United States. Since early 2002, doctors' insurance premiums for malpractice coverage have soared. As Congress and state governments debate laws intended to stabilize the cost of insurance, doctors continue to blame lawyers and lawyers continue to blame doctors and insurance companies. This book, which is the capstone of three years' comprehensive research funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, goes well beyond the conventional debate over tort reform and connects medical liability to broader trends and goals in American health policy. Contributions from leading figures in health law and policy marshal the best available information, present new empirical evidence, and offer cutting-edge analysis of potential reforms involving patient safety, liability insurance and tort litigation.

"This is an excellent book that looks at the intersection of our health care and legal systems from a number of valuable and often original perspectives. The backgrounds and perspectives of the contributing authors are diverse with a wide variety of viewpoints represented. I would highly recommend this book to anyone seeking fresh insight into the medical malpractice crisis in the United States." -Richard E. Anderson, M.D., F.A.C.P., Chairman/CEO, The Doctors Company, "A comprehensive treatment of the issues raised in the debate over medical malpractice from a highly knowledgeable set of authors, along with good advice on where we might go from here. I am adding it to my reading list." -Joseph Newhouse, Harvard University, "For those who have long been embroiled in the multi-faceted medical liability problem – or have even come by it more recently, the need for a new prism through which to approach, examine, and address this complex and often emotional conundrum has become increasingly apparent. This book is that prism. The thoughtful, elaborate, and frequently provocative papers both written and assembled by Sage and Kersh offer hope, historical perspective, and challenges to those who actually want to constructively change the system to make it truly just for all of the involved parties and most particularly for injured patients." -Dennis S. O'Leary, M.D., President, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, "The book is an excellent resource for anyone interested i what we know, don't know, and know that [it] isn't so much about medical malpractice and its reform. By reframing medical malpractice as a health policy isue, the book has the potential to move us beyond the current debate..." David A. Hyman, Health Affairs

William Sage received his medical and law degrees with honors from Stanford University in 1988 and has been a member of the faculty of Columbia Law School since 1995. In 1993, he headed four working groups of the President's Task Force on Health Care Reform in the Clinton White House. He recently served as principal investigator for the Project on Medical Liability in Pennsylvania. He is also the recipient of an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and has published more than 60 articles in legal, health policy, and clinical journals. He is an elected fellow of the Hastings Center on bioethics, and is a member of the editorial board of Health Affairs. He is married with two children, and lives near New York City. Rogan Kersh received his B.A. from Wake Forest University, and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University. He has taught political science and public administration at Syracuse since 1996; his extensive political experience includes internships in the U.S. Senate and British Parliament, as well as work in the Washington tax-policy office of Coopers & Lybrand, and think tanks in Washington and Tokyo. His book Dreams of a More Perfect Union was published in 2001, and he is currently completing two books on health policy. He is a board member of the Critical Review Foundation and associate editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law.