The patients aren't the problem.

While George Bush pretends that "junk and frivolous lawsuits discourage good docs from even practicing medicine in the first place," as though that provides some kind of excuse for his complete failure to address the real crisis of health care availability in America, the real facts are out there. Right now, nobody's doing a better job of bringing those facts to light than Bob Herbert, who had yet another informative column in yesterday's New York Times, reporting that

...in several states specifically characterized by the A.M.A. as in "crisis," the evidence is rolling in that malpractice claims and awards are not appreciably increasing, and in some instances are declining.

The A.M.A. has its crisis states marked in red on a map of the U.S. on its Web site. One of the red states is Missouri. But a press release in April from the Missouri Department of Insurance said, "Missouri medical malpractice claims, filed and paid, fell to all-time lows in 2003 while insurers enjoyed a cash-flow windfall."

Another red state on the A.M.A. map is New Jersey. Earlier this month, over the furious objections of physicians' representatives, a judge ordered the release of data showing how much was being paid out to satisfy malpractice claims. The judge's order was in response to a suit by The Bergen Record.

The newspaper reported that an analysis of the data showed that malpractice payments in New Jersey had declined by 21 percent from 2001 to 2003. But malpractice insurance premiums surged over the same period. A.M.A. officials told me yesterday that they thought the New Jersey data was "incomplete," but they did not dispute the 21 percent figure.

There are a lot of problems with health care delivery in this country, but those problems aren't caused by the patients, and they're not caused by the attorneys who, working purely on spec, try to help injured patients get redress from avaricious insurance companies. The Administration blame game, played out in service to those same insurers (whose lawyers, by the way, bill by the hour, win or lose), only compounds the problem.

Now the Supreme Court has made things even worse, stripping state courts of jurisdiction in medical malpractice when performed under the shield of an HMO.

One solution is for Congress to pass a Patient's Bill of Rights with real teeth. The House Democrats have an terrific proposal on the table, and the DCCC has a petition to support it. You can learn more and sign the petition here.