WHAT WILL TORT REFORM DO FOR ANESTHESIOLOGISTS?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released his long-awaited healthcare reform (HCR) package on Wednesday, November 18, 2009. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, S. ___ would cost $849 billion over 10 years. A vote to cut off debate on whether the bill can proceed, which will need 60 votes to succeed, is expected on Saturday. Passage is highly uncertain. Just three weeks ago Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi unveiled the Affordable Health Care for America Act, H.R. 3962, for which the 10-year price tag was $1.1 trillion. The dollar amounts are so large that they are best understood by comparison to other expenditures. As an example, consider current estimates of the national cost of healthcare fraud and waste: these range from about $500 to $850 billion per year. We will look at the impact of fraud and waste in a future e-Alert. This week, we will review the savings and other benefits that could be realized through tort reform. The same agency that calculated the costs of th
