Data in Policy Debate: Medical Malpractice and Defensive Medicine

Medical malpractice insurance in the US is often considered a problem that needs to change to help Americans pay less for healthcare services. The Affordable Healthcare Act didn’t have any medical malpractice tort reform as part of the bill, something CNN calls a “glaring omission.”

We decided to look at the oft-considered largest category of cost to the consumer–”defensive medicine”–and came across some very interesting results! This will be the first in a series of posts in which we explore the impact of different approaches to the data in having policy debate.