Byline: DAN FREEDMAN Hearst Newspapers
WASHINGTON - With Senate Republicans ready to bring up legislation that would limit medical malpractice verdicts, I realize my recent bout with prostate cancer might qualify me as a poster child for one of their rallying cries - reining in defensive medicine.
Defensive medicine is when physicians, fearful of lawsuits, order extra tests to make sure patients don't sue them later and claim that the doctors didn't do enough to make a correct diagnosis.
Joined by President Bush, the American Medical Association and the health insurance lobby, Senate Republicans led by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., himself a doctor, say the costs of defensive medicine show the need for limits on jury verdicts for punitive damages and awards for "pain and suffering" in malpractice lawsuits.
Supporters of malpractice caps argue that the nation's health-care system could save up to $126 billion annually in expenditures for …
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