In a previous post, I suggested that my brother and his family could save thousands on their health insurance if they moved in with his former college roommate’s family in Pennsylvania, rather than settle and buy coverage in New Jersey.

I thought that former roommate’s wife (Kristin, another college friend) would shoot me virtual daggers. Instead, she wrote:

Wow — guess we’re pretty lucky! Although, we can’t seem to keep our doctors here in PA due to high malpractice insurance costs. So maybe the best deal for everyone would be to buy their insurance in PA, then drive to NJ for their doctor’s appointments.

That’s one way to get around unwanted costs imposed by a state’s medical malpractice laws. In our book Healthy Competition, Mike Tanner and I suggest another: Let patients, doctors, hospitals, and insurers agree up front on the level of malpractice protection that patients receive.

You like caps on non-economic damages? Sign yourself right up. You want more malpractice protection than that? It might cost you more, but the choice is yours. The contracts that providers are willing to write could even tell patients something about the quality of care.

Patients can already choose a different level of malpractice protection by traveling out-of-state or out-of-country for treatment. Why not let them do so without leaving home?