The president could sacrifice one of dems’ sacred cows -- trial lawyers.

President Barack Obama took his campaign to reform healthcare to the American Medical Association -- which has already opposed on the key elements -- and he brought something unexpected to the podium: the possibility of malpractice reform.

Obama spoke Monday to the American Medical Association, which opposes the president’s call for a new public insurance program that would compete with private plans -- and, presumably, drive down doctors’ prices.

The Trouble With Defensive Medicine

But opening the door to tort reform might be welcome among physicians, who’ve long asserted that high medical costs -- including unnecessary tests and procedures -- are driven by fear of lawsuits and huge jury awards. Such “defensive medicine” is thought to account for between 4 and 9 percent of U.S. healthcare spending, according to the Progressive Policy Institute.

Doctors are the key to eliminating healthcare waste, said David Kendall of the Third Way think tank; they order most of the tests, medications, and procedures that patients receive. Their fear of getting slapped with malpractice lawsuits gives them a perverse incentive to order more care than patients actually need.

Doctors do what they must to protect themselves from lawsuits, Kendall said, but not all they can to prevent the injuries from occurring in the first place. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that 48,000 to 98,000 patients die each year in U.S. hospitals due to avoidable medical errors.

What Would Tort Reform Look Like?

The president did not offer proposals to reform the medical justice system, and he rejected the AMA’s priority solution of capping malpractice awards, Forbes magazine reported. But Obama called for exploring “a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first, let doctors focus on practicing medicine, and encourage broader use of evidence-based guidelines.”

Some of the options advocates have recommended for medical justice reform include:

            • Tribunals of neutral experts to hear malpractice claims;

            • Requiring mediation;

            • Granting doctors presumptive protection in malpractice lawsuits if they have followed recommended clinical practice guidelines; and