For those of you who don't know, back in 2003, the Texas legislature passed Proposition 12, which capped non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits at $750,000. The law also capped the liability on the individual physician at $250,000.

This clearly provides an ideal test case for what a comprehensive-style tort reform would do within the confines of a state laboratory. And, after all, isn't that how it's supposed to work? All we have to do is look at Massachusetts to see how well health care reform works (or doesn't) in a similar experiment. Not that we learned any lessons from it, but I digress…

So what happened in the Lone Star State? Well, according to this study – straight from the pages of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, medical malpractice claims tumbled 80 percent at one particular medical center in Texas (the study looked at two of them over an 18-year time frame).

In you were to draw out the costs associated with these lawsuits – and the related malpractice insurance premiums – the study found that pre-reform the annualized price tag hovered at around $600,000 every year. In the post-reform era (since 2004), the associated annualized legal and malpractice costs plummeted all the way to $500 a year.

I'm no mathematician, but I don't need Slow Joe to tell me that's an easy way to cut some waste.