What are we reforming here?

I stole this off of Nick's facebook page. It's a quick overview of why malpractice reform hasn't been an issue in our health care debate. An argument I have heard is that this type of reform needs to be done on the state level.

Why medical malpractice is off limits.

It appears to me that the cost of medical care is skyrocketing and needs to be reduced by all measures leading to the increasing cost of care. The three factors as I see it leading to the immense cost of health care are malpractice insurance, compensation for low pay to doctors from government plans, and compensation caused by uninsured individuals not paying a dime. (by compensation I mean if one person doesn't pay anything or very little, people who do pay, pay more)

The health care bills as they stand will decrease the cost of care compensating for uninsured individuals by insuring more people, but government plans including medicare and medicaid and future government options do not and will not pay out enough to adjust for this compensation. These programs pay doctors next to nothing for their efforts which alone increase the cost of health care for those with private insurance. Adding on the additional cost of malpractice insurance, private insurance companies will not be able to afford to handle this burden.

A bill in congress, the medicare physician fairness act of 2009 bill 1776, which would have increased the amount paid to physicians as standardized payment from levels set in 1996(thats right 1996, everyone knows that health care costs much more now than it did in 1996), was shot down last month.

So of the three things in my mind leading to the insurmountable cost of health care, the only one addressed in these bills is insuring the uninsured, but this will not bring down the cost of health care alone.