We are adding two new sections to our State Handbook on Health Reform:

1. Workers' Comp Reform
2. Malpractice Reform

The proposals go way beyond what other academics and think tanks have proposed (with the exception of Richard Epstein's long forgotten monograph for Cato) and are fairly radical.

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Workers' Compensation is a hugely wasteful system that has received almost no attention from think tanks. All too often, employers believe they have lowered health care costs through one reform or another, only to discover that employees simply shifted their claims from group health to worker's comp. See the summary below of a new study on this topic from the NCPA.

Workers' compensation costs are increasing because state systems provide incentives for employers, employees and others to behave in ways that cause costs to be higher and workplaces to be less safe than they otherwise would be, says N. Michael Helvacian, a Senior Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis. Specifically:

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