Obama to speed up tort reform tests

One day after physicians suffered a pair of setbacks in a healthcare bill unveiled by Sen. Max Baucus, President Obama moved to ease the pain by accelerating a $25 million program aimed at softening the pinch of medical malpractice lawsuits. For months Obama has wooed the nation's doctors and it appeared the courtship was paying off. But tensions flared again this week when doctors discovered that the Baucus bill does nothing substantively to address malpractice costs and offers them only modest gains on the high-priority issue of Medicare reimbursement.