Lawsuits sickening us
By Deroy Murdock
Published February 26, 2006

"Take two depositions and call me in the morning." If doctors could
prescribe litigation to improve human health, every American would
resemble an Olympian and reach age 110. Of course, the opposite is
true. As the free-market Manhattan Institute discovered, the barrage of
lawsuits battering the medical and pharmaceutical industries is
incredibly expensive. Even worse, it shackles doctors, spooks
researchers, and leaves patients sick or dead.
   Since 2003, the Manhattan Institute (which I am advising on a book
project) has examined what it calls "Trial Lawyers Inc."
(triallawyersinc.com). Twice the size of Coca-Cola, the $40 billion
litigation industry is a hulking Goliath, not the plucky David it
fancies itself.
   To gauge its impact, consider the 406 percent increase in
per-doctor malpractice insurance premiums between 1975 and 2003.
Simultaneously, medical-care inflation grew 525 percent, while Trial
Lawyers, Inc. turbocharged medical-malpractice expenses 2,108 percent,
to $26.5 billion.
   Insurers shield themselves from massive payouts by charging doctors
more for malpractice coverage. Average policies rose 18 percent in 2003
alone: Chicago-area obstetricians watched their premiums zoom 67
percent to $230,428.
   Doctors, in turn, practice "defensive medicine" -- using extra
tests and referrals to prevent negligence claims. Thus, 74 percent of
doctors unnecessarily send patients to specialists. Conversely, a
Harris poll found 43 percent of doctors do not prescribe drugs
embroiled in litigation for fear of lawsuits.
   Litigants seem blithely unaware of underlying economic reality.
Covetous plaintiffs in one vaccine lawsuit sought $30 billion in
damages. Vaccine industry annual revenues totaled $6 billion.
   All this has helped raise health insurance annually by 10.9 to 13.9
percent over 2001-2005. Family coverage has risen 59 percent since
2000.
   Unfortunately, Trail Lawyers Inc.'s damage has metastasized from
our wallets to our well-being. Litigation's clinical side effects are
widespread and worsening.
   · Trial Lawyers Inc. kicks the poor and minorities in the teeth.
Thanks to liability-insurance costs, Methodist Hospital in low-income
south Philadelphia stopped delivering babies in 2002. Facing a $2
million malpractice premium, Manhattan's Elizabeth Seton Childbearing
Center closed in 2003 -- bad news for the 30 percent of its patients on
Medicaid.
   · Among the 13 hospitals in Palm Beach County, Fla., five have no
emergency-room neurologists. Some seizure patients and accident victims
have had to travel more than 100 miles to Gainesville and Tampa for
treatment. Barbara Masterson, 53, had a stroke in 2004. Lawsuit-weary
local neurologists refused to see her. While hospital personnel
scrambled for a neurosurgeon, the patient died.
   · Less than a year after GlaxoSmithKline introduced LYMErix in
1999, lawyers attacked, claiming this adult Lyme-disease vaccine caused
arthritis. By 2002, Glaxo withdrew LYMErix. Previously-stable
Lyme-disease infections soared 40 percent.
   · A quarter of pregnant women once used Bendectin for morning
sickness. A lawyer-fueled frenzy over alleged birth defects prompted
some Bendectin users to abort fetuses. Facing 2,000 suits, $18 million
in claims and $20 million in sales, Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals yanked
Bendectin from U.S. pharmacies in 1983. No evidence has linked defects
to Bendectin, which still sells abroad. Meanwhile, U.S. birth defects
are flat, while morning-sickness hospitalizations have doubled.
   So, is there any cure for "litigitis?"
   · Since Texas capped noneconomic damages at $250,000 in 2003,
malpractice suits have been halved, and five insurers have cut total
annual premiums by $50 million.
   · Common Good -- a Gotham-based nonprofit launched by Philip K.
Howard, author of "The Death of Common Sense" -- advocates medical
courts in which specialized judges, often in nonjury trials, could
evaluate scientific evidence, which sometimes baffles jurors.
   A Texas jury, for instance, blamed Vioxx for one user's fatal heart
attack, then invoiced Merck $253 million. Merck's scientific defense
seemed to flummox jurors.
   "Whenever Merck was up there, it was like wah, wah, wah," said
juror John Ostrom in last Aug. 22's Wall Street Journal, parroting
Charlie Brown's teacher. "We didn't know what the heck they were
talking about."
   Medical courts also would counteract some jurors' anti-defendant
bias. Left-wing litigator Ron Kuby alluded to this when he said, "The
Bronx civil jury is the greatest tool of wealth redistribution since
the Red Army."
   Such reforms are needed -- Stat. Without them, Trial Lawyers Inc.
will aggravate the splitting headache that is American medicine -- far
beyond the reach of aspirin.

   Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service
and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in
Arlington, Va.