WASHINGTON – Overall spending on health care would rise as a result of legislation approved a week ago by the House, and billions of dollars in projected savings contained in the measure will be difficult to maintain, according to a report by a top official at the agency that oversees Medicare.

Most of my colleagues and I agree that "reining in lawsuits" is one of the best first steps to decreasing health costs and allowing hospitals and primary care docs to make services more readily available to all. Lowering education costs for those attempting to enter the field would also help with the supply shortage. Instead, the expense of medical school and training continues to increase at an alarming rate, further decreasing incentive to enter the field and go for the, unfortunately, less lucrative careers in primary care.

Obama promised to "bend the cost curve" with Obamacare. Message to Obama: Mr. President, perhaps you don't understand! We need the cost curve to bend down not up! Can't you do ANYTHING right Mr. President?

There is no way any of this Obamacare plan can provide health care. It will greatly feed insurance and care providers with another level of profit far from their wildest dreams. Not only would health care providers reap the $47 billion in Medicare fraud now but another additional $800+ billion from the tax payers in another even bigger fraud.

And every one is wrong about lawsuits and excessive claims, that is minimal costs. The high cost for tort insurance is because they waste so much money on lawyers to lie and defraud patients. If a patient had some serious errors in a doctors care then they should be held accountable and even lose their license.

Just because doctors have medical license it does not give them the right to willful negligence. That's the whole issue with lawsuits, negligence and maiming a person for life. If doctors and hospitals have a problem with being negligent then they should not be practicing medicine.

These lawsuits aren't frivolous, it's the only recourse patients have for crime in medical care. States, cities, and counties will not defend patients so it ends up in civil courts and called a nuisance.

Fix the system, then the lawsuits.