Tort reform is a lie. It doesn’t benefit the general public and results mainly in stripping Americans of their rights. The laws are pushed by well-funded, anti-consumer groups with friendly-sounding names like “ALEC” and the “U.S. Chamber of Commerce.” Their goal is to boost insurance company profits, insulate incompetent doctors from liability and promote propaganda about a non-existent “lawsuit explosion.” The result is that badly injured consumers pick up the high cost of medical mistakes in the name of cheaper malpractice insurance for doctors — who make the mistakes.

Ironically, a study from Americans for Insurance Reform in 2009 found that under Missouri’s damages cap, medical malpractice rates actually went up 1 percent, while in neighboring Iowa, which has no damage cap, malpractice premiums dropped 6 percent.

Tort reform does not achieve another goal of reducing healthcare costs. A groundbreaking study published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies this year examined the effects of the tort reform law in Texas, one of only two states where detailed data on malpractice claims is publicly available. “We find no evidence that Texas’s 2003 tort reforms reduced health-care spending or spending trends,” the study says. It adds, “it is time for policymakers to abandon the hope that tort reform can be a major element in health-care cost control.”

Read More: The Huffington Post