Peter Orszag likes the health care reforms that he had a hand in negotiating while serving as White House budget director. But he also has some regrets.
"... [I]t does almost nothing to reform medical malpractice laws," Orszag writes in The New York Times. "Lawmakers missed an important opportunity to shield from malpractice liability any doctors who followed evidence-based guidelines in treating their patients."
Physician practices would agree with Orszag, as malpractice reform has widespread support in the physician community. While debating the health care reform bill, even President Barack Obama said he was willing to add malpractice provisions to the reform bill. But the final bill only added state-level malpractice reform pilot projects.
What prevented serious malpractice reform from becoming a reality? Probably politics. But Malpractice reform efforts are not dead. James Arvantes at the American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP) wrote an article on Wednesday agreeing with Orszag, stating medical liability reform was "one of the biggest missed opportunities of the entire health care reform legislation, according to analysts."
So what does Orszag like about the health care reform bill? Payment reforms: "Medical professionals should be given incentives for better care rather than more care. The health care reform act already includes measures that enable policymakers to shift Medicare's payments toward ‘fee for quality' rather than ‘fee for service," he says.
Orszag promises to elaborate on this in his next column.