malresult

Thomas Szasz has written in the Reason WEB a proposal that patents be able to purchase "Malresult" insurance. This allows the patients to be compensated for "improbable" bad medical outcoms without having to place blame on the doctor, thus eliminiating the Tort law problems in most cases.

. It looks as though it is a useful proposal.

My thought is that it also allows reasonable pressures "against" bad doctors because:

1) The rates, within a field, could reflect the evaluation of the doctor so that the patient could see which doctors seem to low risk.

2) Since the Malresult insurance company would want to "get its money back" it might try to collect from doctors whose Malpractice caused a bad result. This would mean that one Insurance company might try to collect from another without involving the patient, thus might well be more acceptable as a Free Market activity to the current administration than the current patient Malpractice legal situation.

Note: Slate has now written an article that also discusses the concept of what we have called MalResult insurance:

Malpractice Mess -- Do the Swedes have a faultless fix for the malpractice mess? -- By David Dobbs, (Feb. 22, 2005, Slate)

MORE ON MALPRACTICE....Today comes word of yet another study showing that the rise in medical malpractice premiums has almost nothing to do with an actual increase in malpractice payouts. (July 7, 2005 Washington Monthly)