• 05
  • November
    2011

There is no doubt that lowering the cost of health care, as well as providing it to people in the first place, is a complex problem. John R. Graham, a health care analyst with the Pacific Research Institute, distinguishes the two different approaches to health care taken by Texas Gov. Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Graham clearly favors Perry's approach. In his piece for the Star-Telegram, he writes that Perry's approach has lowered the cost of insurance guarding against medical malpractice claims (because of caps on noneconomic damages) and brought more doctors to Texas as a result.

It all depends on what you use as your measure for "success."

Graham uses health "outcomes," i.e. the rate of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from cancer. Texas apparently ranks pretty well in these areas. Texas has had job growth, too, under Perry's watch, to the tune of one million added jobs.

But that's not the whole story - and it seems a bit near-sighted.

While former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney focused on "universal" health care insurance coverage, which Graham suggests simply creates "Medicaid dependents," Perry tort reform creates jobs.

But job creation comes at the cost of real justice to those who are injured in medical malpractice cases. A cap on noneconomic damages is a cap on compensation for those whose quality of life has been severely impacted because of a doctor's negligence.

Source: Star-Telegram, "Graham: Perry's Texas: Creating jobs, not Medicaid dependents," by John R. Graham, 11/2/11