> Any law that limits the cases where patients can sue, or the amount of money they can collect, is likely to lower medical use in the hospital by less than the 5 percent they measured in their study.

The telling thing about laws to address malpractice liability is that they typically are focused on capping large verdicts. But such laws are illogical: generally, large verdicts will be awarded where a doctor screwed up and caused the most damage. Cases with large verdicts are the most meritorious ones, and the ones where limiting liability is least likely to eliminate over-testing that does not contribute to quality of care.

If states actually wanted to address the costs of defensive medicine, they would do something like create affirmative defenses for doctors who adhered to certain established testing protocols.