[jeffkrol]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/aug/25/rick-perry/ri...tors-because-/

Ahhh the "wonders" and "magic" of tort reform.................

But the case for Perry’s statement gets even shakier when you review numbers prior to the new malpractice rules. It turns out that in the nine years before tort reform, the number of doctors grew twice as fast as the population. So Texas did a pretty good job attracting doctors before the law changed.

Tom Banning, chief executive officer of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, said that back in the early 1990’s the state began passing laws that made it physician-friendly. Among them, a prompt-pay rule to "to ensure that insurers pay physicians promptly and correctly," Banning said, "which creates a very good environment for practices."

Banning said tort reform was more good news for doctors, a sentiment borne out by opinion surveys from the state’s medical association. But he acknowledges that population growth is the biggest force behind the growing ranks of doctors. "It’s like the Willie Sutton rule," Banning said, referring to the famous bank robber. "Go where the money is. From a doctor’s standpoint, you go where the patients are."

Especially patients who can pay. Banning and other observers in Texas note that most of the new doctors are clustered in the affluent, fast growing suburbs around the state’s biggest cities.

This puts a damper on one of Perry’s additional points, that tort reform opens the doors for physicians to practice in the state’s most rural counties. The results here are mixed. The governor is right about emergency room doctors. The state has 60 percent more of them then it did in 2003 and tort reform likely played a major role, experts told us. ER doctors got more protections from tort reform than just about any other medical specialty.

But Perry also boasted that rural counties were getting specialists in obstetrics and gynecology that they never had before. The reality here is murkier. A report from the Texas Alliance for Patient Access says 14 counties (of 254 total) gained an ob-gyn. We looked at one community along the Rio Grande, Starr County, and found that yes, four years after tort reform, they got one. But the situation has flipped back and forth, and as of May 2011, Starr County had no ob-gyn specialist.

Our ruling

There is no question that tort reform drove down medical malpractice insurance premiums and reduced the number of malpractice suits. And there is no question that most health care providers like the change and say it’s a factor that leads them to practice in the state. But the wholesale transformation that Perry describes is not backed up by the numbers.

Perry said Texas has 21,000 more doctors thanks to tort reform. That’s flat out wrong. Texas has only about 13,000 more doctors in the state and the historic trends suggest that population growth was the driving factor. We rate his statement False.

[Ratmagiclady]

He's a Dominionist who would deny me my civil rights on at least two counts if even he *were* elected.


Fascism.



Don't think the other GOP candidates are that much better. (Bachmann? She's done *nothing* but be a professional homophobe all her life. Period. Accompl;ished. Nothing.) But, Perry? He's just a Dubya who says it out loud and knows the corporate media won't dare cover it. Romney just *lied* about not messing with our civil rights. .....till he got a chance to.

David Barton.

Look him up.

Particularly what he said about Native Americans... Around the Arizona shootings thing, before and after.

[GeneV]

There was a marginal gain, but at whose expense? Texas is a terrible place to have a child born with a disability (there is no "good" place) due to a physician mistake. The parents won't get much help from the state, and the insurers won't have to pay.

[GeneV]

David Barton.

Look him up.

Particularly what he said about Native Americans... Around the Arizona shootings thing, before and after.

David Barton is scary, and he is vice-chair of the Texas GOP.

[Nesster]

...I wonder whether or not one of the others will get desperate enough to turn on Perry: after all Texas is experiencing Biblical draught and fire, all that's missing is the locusts. God telling him he ought to stay governor and not run for Prez? Or retribution for some sins committed in Texas? On Perry's watch...