* New insurance company offers plans at lower rates and the contract waives all rights to sue the doctors, and the malpractice payout algorithms are disclosed.
* Doctors agree to accept this plan and charge lower fees accordingly
* Malpractice insurance companies reduce charges to doctors based on the percentage of non-tort patients he has
* Patients just have to call 1-800-TORT-FREE to sign up.
* Some patients won’t like the algorithms of 800-TORT-FREE and chose another company’s plan based on their algorithms.

Everybody participates voluntarily and, as you show, the efficiencies are there. I’d jump at this.

But, wait, our governments make this kind of competition illegal.

We sure do need government healthcare reform – in the form of getting out of the way.

One time, I was not working and lacked insurance. I ended up going to the public hospital emergency room to deal with a finger that I had jammed hard, and was swollen for a couple weeks and hurting a lot. I thought it might be broken. After around 12 hours of waiting, I eventually got to see a doctor, who had it x-rayed. It wasn’t broken, but he had it immobilized, and also prescribed some simple exercises to loosen it up. The visit wasn’t too expensive for an ER visit – $120, subsidized by the government.

See, we have socialized medicine in America too!

On the other hand, the behaviour of some hospitals and the way they go to the extreme to
save an extra buck or not properly train their personnel borders on criminal neglegence and is totally a another matter.

For the segment of interest to your doctor friend:
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR DOCTORS TO BE PERFECT, MECHANICALLY OR MENTALLY IN THEIR DECISIONS, ALL THE TIME. THE HUMAN BODY IS STILL TOO COMPLICATED TO DEMAND PERFECTION FROM PEOPLE EVEN THOUGH THEY SPEND NEARLY TEN YEARS GETTING TO THE POINT WHERE THEY START TO PRACTICE. EVEN GOOD DOCTORS MAKE MISTAKES AND CAN BE SECOND GUESSED. HEART SURGEONS GET PATIENTS WHOSE LAST CHANCE TO LIVE DEPENDS ON THE DOCTOR PERFORMING A MEDICAL MIRACLE. SUCH TALENT SHOULD NOT BE LOST WHEN THE PATIENT DIES ON THE OPERATING TABLE; SOMETIMES WHAT IS OBVIOUSLY A “NO CHANCE” PROCEDURE GETS GRADUATED UP TO “NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE SHOT“ WHICH SOULD BE MADE CLEAR TO THE PATIENT AND RELATIVES OF SAME.
I WOULD IMMUNIZE ALL DOCTORS FROM MALPRACTICE SUITS, provided doctors would throw the well known bums in their profession out. No more restraints of trade suits. Gone. Just like the incompetent doctor. If doctors do not live up to their end of the bargain, the world can always go back to the old way. Sue or be sued. And as a professor in college once lectured to my organic chemistry class: SCIENTISTS PUBLISH THEIR MISTAKES, DOCTORS BURY THEIRS. That will remain the same.
Doctors would start a fund, say twenty-five cents–or some nominal sum–for every patient they see in the course of their practice, every time they see the patient, and such money collected would go ONLY to pay for the medical expenses incurred in trying to make up for the MEDICAL harm any doctor had done in treating a patient. Thus, doctors would be hiring other doctors to correct, if possible, or alleviate as well as could be done, for what might otherwise have ended up as a malpractice suit. NONE OF THE MONEY WILL BE USED TO PAY FOR MENTAL ANGUISH AND PAIN.
For people who feel abused for not being allowed to sue the doctors, I suggest that INSURANCE COMPANIES offer policies to the PUBLIC that allow collection of monies to compensate for pain and suffering and loss of income and whatever else the INSURANCE COMPANY wants to offer. This way PEOPLE can hire LAWYERS to sue the INSURANCE COMPANY, go to court or settle out of court, BUT THE DOCTOR(S) INVOLVED WITH THE PATIENT WOULD NOT BE THE OBJECT OF THE SUIT OR NEED TO PARTICIPATE IN IT.