Report finds legal system increases cost of health care

A report from a San Francisco-based think tank found that the practice of defensive medicine, caused by fear of litigation, raises the cost of health care by $124 billion per year. That's just one of the findings outlined in Pacific Research Institute's "Jackpot Justice: The True Cost of America's Tort System," which outlines some of the direct and indirect costs of the US legal system.

The report found that an "overly expensive liability system increases the cost of many risk-reducing products and services and health-care services, making them less accessible and, in some cases, unavailable to consumers," according to Medical Liability Monitor (05/2007). As a result, PRI estimates that more than 114,000 people have died because of "inefficiencies" in our legal system over the past two decades.