Boom Shocka Locka

Republicans have an important point to make in the health debate: doctors do seem to practice some amount of so-called defensive medicine, out of fear of lawsuits.

In my column this week, I cited a high-end estimate of $60 billion a year, or 3 percent of medical spending, for such defensive medicine. Most of this money wouldn’t flow to the government, because the government doesn’t pay for most health care. So you can’t assume that, if Congress figured out how to reduce defensive medicine, anything like $60 billion a year would become available to pay for an expansion of health insurance (which will cost somewhere between $85 billion and $120 billion a year).

But health reform isn’t likely to include much malpractice reform unless the Republicans negotiate for it. And the Republicans can’t negotiate for it if, with the exception of Senator Olympia Snowe, the Maine Republican, they have made it clear that they’re going to oppose health reform virtually no matter what.