Is Orszag Proposing Medical Malpractice Reform or Something Else?

Kathryn Nix /

White House Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag

Former Office for Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag recently wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times on the need for medical malpractice reform. Well, kind of.

Orszag’s approach has more to do with creating stricter mechanisms to enforce physicians’ compliance with evidence-based guidelines than with reforming the tort system to better protect doctors and patients.

Orszag writes, “What’s needed is a much more aggressive national effort to protect doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines. That’s the only way that malpractice reform could broadly promote the adoption of best practices.” He describes malpractice reform as a way to “encourage doctors to adopt new evidence more quickly.” (more…)