Your coverage of the recent health care forum sponsored by the McLean County Medical Society notes Dr. Larry Nord's claim that tort reform is necessary to bring down costs. That claim is misinformed for several reasons, the chief among them being that a majority of states, including Illinois, have already passed tort reform legislation that caps damages.

Furthermore, a recent study done by the Congressional Budget Office found that slashing medical malpractice lawsuits by 30 percent would only result in savings of 0.04 percent - 0.04 percent!

The real problem driving up costs is that our health care system is run by for-profit doctors, hospitals and insurance companies whose competing financial interests have led to over-treatment by the doctors and hospitals and, in turn, to severe rationing by the insurance companies.

In lieu of redundant and ineffectual tort reform, we can increase access to care and bring down costs by eliminating the fee-for-service payment model and by instituting the "public option" - Medicare for those under 65 - which will bring down premiums by eliminating marketing and administrative costs and by competing with private insurers.

A study published just last month in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 73 percent of physicians nationwide favor a public insurance option for Americans. And yet, here in Bloomington, the McLean County Medical Society argues for the status quo.

Meanwhile, according to a Harvard study just published in the American Journal of Public Health, 45,000 Americans keep dying each year from a lack of insurance. It's shameful.

Chip Corwin, Bloomington