That Jackson Healthcare study is from an online poll of doctors reporting their own ideas of what defensive medicine costs them. "Defensive medicine" itself is a catch-all term that can basically describe any test that's done on someone that doesn't have a confirmed diagnosis. Given that doctors have a financial interest in over-reporting how much of their work is "defensive" in nature, that 34% number is not even remotely credible.
I found
this blog post on the subject of "defensive medicine" from an ER doctor very persuasive.
So when the WSJ reporter asked me why I made the defensive decision -- wasn't it just the fear of getting sued? Nope. It's a fear, and a significant one. But it's possibly the least likely of all the bad things that happen when you are wrong. If you've been sued, especially if you thought it was frivolous, or you lost, or if you know someone who's lost big, that fear is magnified beyond its real probability. But it's just one disincentive among many, and even if you eliminated the possiblity of getting sued (or reduced it greatly, as they have in Texas), there are still so many "punishments" for an "error" that I suspect that the cost of Defensive Medicine will change little.
In other words, there are a lot of other reasons other than lawsuits that doctors order tests or provide treatment that someone might find unnecessary, and those don't go away once you eliminate junk lawsuits.
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