Campus & Community

Medical Liability Costs Make Up 2.4% of U.S. Health Spending

1 min read

Bloomberg

Medical malpractice and guarding against suits cost the U.S. about $55.6 billion annually, or 2.4 percent of the total health-care bill, according to Harvard University’s Atul Gawande and co-authors.

The yearly price of so-called defensive medicine — tests, visits and procedures performed to reduce litigation risk — is about $45.6 billion, the authors said today in the journal Health Affairs, in a report using 2008 dollars. That’s the biggest part of the malpractice bill, which also includes clinicians’ time spent defending suits, and price increases to cover the cost of liability insurance…

Read more here