Who will protect doctors accused of denying medical services because of budgetary constraints?
The legal systems of other countries with health price controls severely restrict or all but eliminate the ability of patients to sue providers or the government for denying them medical services or delivering poor quality care. In contrast, the U.S. has experienced in recent decades a virtual explosion in medical malpractice litigation. Indeed, the malpractice crisis has spurred doctors and hospitals to practice defensive medicine—the performance of unnecessary tests and procedures primarily for legal protection. By some projections, defensive medicine now adds tens of billions of dollars to the cost of the health care system, on top of the related costs of malpractice trials and damage awards. The malpractice problem is crucial to a policy of global budgets because in practice it is doctors and hospital administrators who will be expected to make the actual on-the-spot decisions to withhold treatments to keep within a budget. But if an angry patient or relative can sue a doctor or ho
