Atlanta anesthesiologist Dr. Tod Rubin says in an op/ed piece in today’s Washington Times what many of us have been thinking:

The suggestion by President Obama to provide a paltry $50 million to institute a medical liability pilot program is just another example of how insincere, deceptive and ignorant he remains on the substantive issues affecting our health care system. To infer that giving each state $1 million to study the medical malpractice liability issues it faces is laughable.

Dr. Rubin, who is a board member of Docs 4 Patient Care, presents a common-sense three-point plan to combat the problem of abusive medical malpractice lawsuits. Fear of such lawsuits force physicians to practice defensive medicine that in turn increases the costs of our health care system by $200 billion to $400 billion per year.

The Obama plan to provide $1m per state to study the issue is too clever by a half. The President hopes to fool us into thinking he’s serious about med mal reform when the reality is that there is plenty of evidence that reform could save hundreds of billions of health care dollars each year. The President is both unwilling to stand up to the trial bar that funds his political operation and unwilling to shoot straight with the American public. No wonder his health care proposal is in such choppy waters.

Read Dr. Rubin’s full piece here.