GOP to Obama: Tort Reform Starts with the Victims and Their Legal Representation. Not with the 200,000 Deaths a Year.

Like any Republican hot button issue, they are often wrong about the solution and start reform at the wrong end of problem.

Instead of preventing over 200,000 deaths from medical errors a year, the GOP wants to attack the issue well after the fact in a way that protects the insurance companies bottom line and paid out settlements. Smart. According to American Association for Justice President Anthony Tarricone, “Over 98,000 people are killed every year by 'preventable' medical errors. Reducing accountability won’t improve health care.”

There would be fewer malpractice awards it we reduced medical errors first. Right? You don't have to be a friggin' genius to figure that one out. Yet President Obama doesn't even get it, a victim of years of Republican whining and positioning.

According to Examiner.com:

...the conservative approach of "tort reform" that seeks to eliminate "frivolous" lawsuits is nothing more than a ploy by insurance companies to avoid paying claims in order to boost their profits. Public Citizen, outlines 10 proposed reforms ... save 85,000 lives and $35 billion a year. These proposed reforms are:

Use best practices to prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia, saving 32,000 lives and $900 million; 

Use best practices to prevent pressure ulcers (bed sores), saving 14,071 lives and $5.5 billion; 

Implement safeguards and quality control measures to reduce medication errors, saving 4,620 lives and $2.3 billion; 

Use best practices to prevent patient falls in health care facilities, saving $1.5 billion; 

Use a checklist to prevent catheter infections, saving 15,680 lives and $1.3 billion; 

Increase nurse staffing, saving 5,000 lives and $242 million; 

Permit standing orders to increase flu and pneumococcal vaccinations in the elderly, saving 9,520 lives and $545 million; 

Use beta-blockers after heart attacks, saving 3,600 lives and $900,000;

and increase the use of advanced care planning, saving $3.2 billion.

Other recommendations include mandatory reporting of medical errors; expanding nursing education to eliminate a shortage of 126,000 nurses; and an adequate peer review process for the medical profession to better police itself in order to weed out the incompetents responsible for a large proportion of medical errors. Better patient care is what's really needed to reduce medical malpractice lawsuits.