July 14, 2004

Medical Economics magazine takes a look at proposals for "no-fault" compensation for iatrogenic (doctor-caused) injury, and the difficulty of keeping such arrangements from getting bogged down in factual disputes over injury causation (or ballooning into general schemes for the compensation of bad results in medicine generally, at untold expense). Includes a sidebar about how two very different systems of no-fault work in New Zealand and Sweden (Gail Garfinkel Weiss, "Malpractice: Can no-fault work?", Medical Economics, Jun. 4). Last year the same publication explored lessons from other countries' medical liability systems (Robert Lowes, "Malpractice: Do other countries hold the key?", Jul. 25, 2003).