Notepad

Here's what she told former Rep. Joe Scarborough on his "Morning Joe" program on MSNBC earlier this year:

I think that, overall, the cost of malpractice insurance, which is the insurance doctors buy in case they do commit an error is a fraction of the overall health care costs. So even if you eliminated that all together, you wouldn't really do much to address the cost.

And here's what Obama said Wednesday night.

Finally, many in this chamber - particularly on the Republican side of the aisle - have long insisted that reforming our medical malpractice laws can help bring down the cost of health care. I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I have talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs. So I am proposing that we move forward on a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine. I know that the Bush Administration considered authorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues. It's a good idea, and I am directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on this initiative today.