Tort Reform: Just the Facts, Ma'am

In a column in the St. Petersburg Times, Susan Taylor Martin discusses how medical malpractice costs are handled in Canada. Martin comments that in this country, "Despite the push for tort reform, the facts don't warrant what Public Citizen, a nonpartisan research group, calls the 'politically charged hysteria surrounding medical malpractice litigation.' The number of U.S. malpractice payments in 2008 was the lowest since creation of the federal National Practitioner Data Bank, which has tracked payments since 1990. And the average payment - about $326,000 - was the smallest in a decade."