While top policymakers in both political parties are looking for ways to make Colorado’s health-care system more affordable and accessible, a move is afoot in the state legislature that, oddly enough, would have just the opposite effect. The pending legislation — Senate Bill 164 — would weaken sensible statutory restraints on runaway lawsuits against our state’s physicians, undermining what has been one of the most successful health-care reforms by any state.
While the result would be to further drive up the cost of health care and drive away doctors, it would fix nothing that is broken.
Colorado’s long-standing curbs on reckless and frivolous litigation against doctors are, in fact, the envy of other states. But that is in jeopardy now.
Doctors are the linchpins in our health-care system. If they cannot afford to maintain their practices or deliver certain types of care because of soaring liability premiums from mounting litigation, the entire health care network starts to unravel. Rural and other underserved areas typically are the canaries in the coal mine, feeling the effects of these gaps in care first.
That’s exactly what was happening in Colorado before key reforms were enacted. Physicians faced annual liability insurance increases of as much as 73 percent. Doctors had no choice but to avoid performing high-risk procedures. They also began retiring early, and some moved out of state. A University of Colorado survey of local OB-GYNs and family physicians at that time found that 20 percent had stopped delivering babies in the previous five years because of malpractice insurance costs, and 63 percent said further increases would cause them to drop all OB services. We were in crisis.
Then, in 1988, the Colorado legislature passed medical liability reform with the landmark Health Care Availability Act. It set caps on medical malpractice damages that struck a fair and flexible balance between compensating patients for legitimate claims and ensuring care remained available in obstetrics, neurosurgery, orthopedics and other higher-risk specialties. The law’s reasonable restraints on litigation remained fair to plaintiffs, too, with a $1 million overall liability cap that could be exceeded if a plaintiff demonstrates that lost wages or future medical expenses would exceed that amount.
The reform has paid off for Coloradans. For most of the years since then, average annual liability rates for most Colorado doctors have been limited to single-digit increases, no increases or even rate reductions. That is why Colorado was one of just eight states last year to be deemed “stable” by the American Medical Association amid what the organization sees as “America’s medical liability crisis.”
Arbitrarily raising Colorado’s limits not only would reverse much of that progress but also would imperil our hopes for containing costs and improving access to health care. A return to the lawsuit-happy days of the 1980s might mean:
• Reduced access to health care as physicians stop delivering high-risk services. In rural Colorado, the decision by a doctor to stop delivering babies could mean women have to drive hours for OB services.
• Increased costs of care as physicians practice more defensive medicine, i.e., tests or services that aren’t needed medically but protect them from lawsuits. The yearly cost of that practice is over $100 billion, “CBS Evening News” reported in October 2007.
Why take that chance? Do we really want Colorado to be like Florida, which the AMA has included among the “crisis” states? It is, of course, ironic that such a counterproductive and costly proposal would emerge in the middle of a debate nationally and in Colorado over how to make health care more affordable and available.
Those of us with health insurance would pay ever more in rate increases and the cost of the uninsured would go ever higher.
Trial lawyers would benefit from larger jury awards. The rest of us would pay the tab.
This is one health-care “reform” we can do without.
State Sen. Bob Hagedorn is a Democrat from Aurora. State Sen. Josh Penry is a Republican from Grand Junction.
