verdict is difficult, but filing a suit against a doctor or hospital is extremely easy and extremely prevalent. And once one is filed, no matter how frivolous or if it's dropped, it stays in the doctor's record forever and affects all future employment, licensing and credentialing. It is extremely stressful for the doctor during the suit and creates paperwork headaches for the rest of his/her career.

Not only that, most malpractice insurance companies will settle just to get it over with, even if the case has no merit and the represented doctor wants to fight it. This stays on the doctor's record as a "settled" case, implying guilt. Lawyers Know this so will frequently take baseless cases for this reason alone.

For these reasons, tort is a huge reason medical costs are exorbitant. Not because of actual settlements, but because of all the CYA medicine practiced by health care professionals and hospitals. They'll do anything to avoid the headache and stress of a possible lawsuit. It's impossible to know the impact, but some experts estimate this unnecessary ordering and performing of CYA tests and procedures accounts for 20% of all health care costs.

This is the cold truth. A couple easy solutions: force lawyers and patients who sue doctors or hospitals to pay all legal costs if they lose the case or if it's deemed frivolous by a judge; have true "juries of your peers," that is juries made up of health care professionals, not ignorant lay public who tend to sympathize with the "injured" plaintiff rather than the "rich" doctor; once the case is settled or dropped, it gets expunged from all public record vis-a-vis the doctors. Only guilty verdicts remain.