The Medinnovation Blog pointed out this report that’s been circulating since Halloween (to point out a completely irrelevant coincidence that still seems ominous). It is funny how wishful thinking can affect one’s ability to read. When I first read the blog entry I thought he said that “medical malpractice rates are lower than they have been in years.”

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Well, the news is still good, just not that good. Increases in medmal insurance rates are lower than they have been in years.

But notice that this news, though positive, is almost overwhelmed by a negative context: “Costs Rise Faster Than Revenue In Many Medical Group Practices.” While this is discouraging, it also poins to another reason why it is so imperative to make sure that liability issues are not a factor in making it too expensive to practice medicine. Once we get that issue out of the way, then we can move on to investigate and find other reasons why the cost/revenue ratio is getting worse.

There are a lot of issues affecting doctors. But since we have pretty good evidence from examples like Texas and Mississippi that tort reform can deal with one of them, that is all the more reason to make sure such reform is carried out everywhere so that we can concentrate on other problems.