Malpractice reform follies
Des Moines Register
January 28, 2005

The Bush administration wants to reform the medical-malpractice system. The core of the plan is a cap of $250,000 on "non-economic" damages.

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The administration's cap would apply only to "non-economic" damages. Example: A physician's errors render a young woman sterile. There are no economic damages. In fact, the woman has been spared future child-rearing expenses, so in economic terms she actually benefits. The only damage is non-economic: The woman will never have children. Economists and psychologists have developed reliable tools to value such damages. They are only estimates, but so are the estimates of lost wages and other economic damages, which the administration has not challenged.

The cap would especially hurt women. Research by Lucinda Finley of the SUNY-Buffalo Law School shows that female victims have mainly non-economic damages, such as reproductive harm. Damages to male victims are mainly economic, such as the inability to work. Finley finds that under the $250,000 cap on non-economic damages recently adopted in California, the median award men received fell by 31 percent while the median award received by women dropped 57 percent.

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