Top 15 Things We Learned From Our Deep Dive Into CBO’s New Medical Malpractice Working Paper

In April 2019, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a new “preliminary” analysis of the potential impact of federal medical malpractice legislation on federal health care spending. Without knowing anything else about this densely written 49-page study, there are three important takeaways:

• CBO has slashed nearly in half its estimate of health care savings from this legislation;

• Probably 90 percent of the medical malpractice “tort reform” provisions in bills that Congress has considered over the last two decades would have no impact on health care costs; and

• Caps on attorneys’ fees cut revenue, not spending. In other words, those laws don’t save money, they cost money.