Health Courts: Panacea or Palliative?

Numerous observers have expressed growing concerns regarding health care delivery, medical malpractice, and litigation against health care providers, although, for years, all fifty of the states have instituted and applied a broad spectrum of medical malpractice reforms while experimenting with various other measures. Some commentators believe that the health care delivery system is now experiencing a crisis in which medical expenses are dramatically rising, even as the number of citizens without medical insurance approaches fifty million; physicians are leaving medicine or particular specialties because of extremely high medical malpractice insurance premiums and too much litigation; and health care professionals practice defensive medicine, essentially by conducting unnecessary tests.