Government Healthcare and the Tort Lawyers

My Perspective:

I have a hard time accepting that the government has my best interests in mind when it writes into bills restrictions on how much money my doctor can spend on me, or how many tests the doctor can give me before he faces government penalties. It seems as though the government is pitting the interests of the doctors against the interests of the patients.

Now understanding that, I am very worried about the effect this will have on our doctors because of tort cases. For example, Since my doctor would only be allowed to give me 5 tests to figure out my illness (5 chances) before he faces penalties for doing too much for just little ol' me according to the government (that's a scary statement), he has an interest in giving me as few tests as possible. What does this mean? Well, the less you test, the greater your chances are that you will receive a bad diagnosis. And what happens when people are misdiagnosed because of the doctor not doing all he could? They get sued by tort lawyers.

Since this bill puts a ceiling on the amount of tests that can be given to each person, yet offers no tort reforms or restrictions, doctors are going to be stuck between a rock (the government) and a hard place (the threat of tort lawsuits).

Doctors cannot afford this risk, and since they can't they will not put up with it, and we cannot afford the ramifications of that.