Malpractice lawsuits force company out of business

One of the major sticking points on the Health Care take over is tort reform, or basically, just reforming the amount of money that can be awarded in lawsuits due to malpractice or other negligence.

Here is a great example of what malpractice lawsuits have done to one insurance company...

And just a few examples of what has happened in some suits:

* St. Paul said it paid out catastrophic sums -- more than $1 million -- twice as often in 2000 as in 1999: 54 cases versus 27.

* In 2000, a Philadelphia jury socked four physicians and two hospital defendants for $100 million for bad outcomes suffered by a baby born at 26 weeks of gestation.

* A Texas jury returned an $11 million malpractice verdict and a West Virginia jury tried to award $2 million to a plaintiff despite a state cap of $1 million.

Since the above example is from 2002, here is a more recent example from Emery University.