Even though lawsuits and litigation comprise only a small portion of the cost of health care – less than 1 percent – attorneys constantly get blamed for the rise in medical expenses.

You can read the statistics, which come from a study done by John Hopkins University School of Medicine and reported in the UPI, here.

A real driver of health care costs is fraud.  A recent L.A. Times article chronicles that the Ensign Group Inc., which operates nursing homes along the West Coast, just settled with the government to reimburse $48 million due to fraudulently inflated Medicare bills.  The facilities were billing for unnecessary work, or work that was never done – mostly in the areas of physical, occupational, and speech therapy. The company would have gotten away with it of not for an employee that spoke up and brought the truth to light.

You can read the full article here.