Its supporters call it "tort reform," and their core goal is to greatly reduce the amount that a jury can award as compensation for pain, suffering, a crippling injury or permanent disfigurement inflicted by an incompetent doctor or negligent hospital.

So in the interest of truth, let's call the crusade what it really is: malpractice protection. Its main effect would be to make doctors and hospitals less accountable for serious malpractice or incompetence.

It's important to remember that fact. The people targeted by malpractice protection will not be those infamous charlatans who file frivolous, unjustified lawsuits. It won't be those victims who have run-of-the-mill malpractice claims.

No, the main targets of so-called "tort reform" will be those whose loved one was killed by a doctor's gross incompetence, or those permanently paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair or a bed by a bad doctor, or who have suffered such serious brain damage that they have been reduced to little more than vegetables.

That's who "tort reform" is designed to affect -- not by accident, but by calculated design. It will take the victims of the most serious cases of malpractice and will make them victims once again.

Nationwide, malpractice protection has been embraced as a goal by the Republican Party, with legislation introduced here in Georgia as well as at the federal level. And it's made for some curious contradictions.

Up in Washington, for example, many of the same people who are pushing a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages awarded to malpractice victims are also pushing legislation that would fine radio DJs up to $500,000 for saying a banned word on the air.

In other words, you would have to pay twice as much for saying naughty things as you would if you ruin someone's life with a sloppy scalpel.

Advocates of malpractice protection contend that they're pursuing a higher good with this "reform." They make a two-part claim: First, malpractice jury awards are getting so ridiculously high that they are forcing malpractice insurance rates to soar; second, soaring malpractice insurance rates are forcing many doctors out of business and presumably into some better-paying line of work.

Oddly, what that better-paying job might be has never been established.

That's not the only hole in the story. While the nonpartisan General Accounting Office has found that the average malpractice verdict has been rising by about 8 percent a year above inflation, that is nowhere near large enough to account for the 200 or even 300 percent rate increases reported in medical-industry horror stories.

Nor is there any evidence whatsoever that doctors are being forced out of the medical industry by malpractice insurance rates. The GAO's investigation found that even in so-called "crisis states" designated by the American Medical Association, the number of doctors has stayed steady or even increased on a per capita basis in recent years.

That is certainly true in Georgia. In debate Wednesday on the floor of the state Senate, speakers warned that malpractice rates are driving so many obstetricians and gynecologists out of business that Georgia mothers may soon be unable to find anyone to deliver their babies. If true, that would indeed be a serious problem. Yet according to the American Medical Association, 1,256 ob-gyns practiced in the state in 2000. By 2002, that number had grown to 1,312.

There is some truth in parts of the stories told by those seeking malpractice protection. The legal system does indeed need to be adjusted on issues such as expert witnesses, and we should do that.

The health care industry is in a financial crisis, particularly in rural areas, but funding cutbacks by government agencies and cost controls by health insurance companies play a far greater role in creating that crisis than malpractice insurance rates. And malpractice insurance rates are soaring, although the insurance industry has so far fended off an investigation into the cause.

But there is no evidence that any of those problems can be solved by penalizing those who have been blinded, crippled, paralyzed or killed by malpractice.

Jay Bookman is deputy editorial page editor.

© 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

###