Lawsuits sickening us

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"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.