But a series of studies published in the current issue of the policy journal Health Affairs suggests that number is not only dramatically too high, but that most of the popular proposals for addressing the medical malpractice problem particularly capping damages for "pain and suffering" would do little to reduce the practice of defensive medicine. First, the numbers. Longtime malpractice and patient safety researcher Michelle Mello of the Harvard School of Public Health noted that some of the figures used during the recent health overhaul debate were "quite imaginative." So she and several colleagues set out to devise a "more defensible estimate." Their conclusion? The total cost of medical malpractice-related costs to the health care system, including defensive medicine, is about $55.6 billion per year, or about 2.4 percent of annual health care spending. Defensive medicine is about 80 percent of that total, the researchers found.