On the other hand, the laws sometimes perform all too well. Doctors often point to liability laws as one of the reasons medical costs have skyrocketed over the past decade. Some of the ways they affect costs are obvious. Doctors take out expensive malpractice insurance to guard against potentially ruinous lawsuits, then pass the costs on to their patients through higher fees. Doctors also say that liability laws drive them to undertake expensive treatments of dubious medical value in order to protect themselves.
Caution is good.
But caution that doesn't improve patients' health outcomes is not. Kessler began to suspect that malpractice laws were driving doctors to exercise the last kind of caution. But there was little data to support his hunch besides the anecdotal evidence from doctors themselves. Others states, like Illinois, had eliminated punitive damages, an award over and above pain and suffering granted to a plaintiff that is intended to punish a reckless doctor. But in a handful of states, including Georgia and Vermont, punitive damages were still on the books.