GOV. RICK PERRY VS. THE TRUTH

I noted below that Perry claimed the tort reform in 2003 led to a 60% increase in the number of doctors in Texas.  I went to the Texas Medical Board demographics page and got the numbers of practicing physicians for each year from 2000 to 2010. All came from the September reports for each year with the exception of 2003 when the latest report is May.

The Board reported in Sept. 2003 that there were 50,549 practicing physicians, so a 60% increase would mean that there would be about 80,878 physicians. The real number is 60,864.

Here's a table of the data:

YEAR	NUMBER OF PHYSICIANS
2000	49706
2001	49994
2002	49978
2003	50549
2004	53139
2005	54092
2006	56155
2007	58343
2008	60768
2009	62521
2010	60864

and here's a graph: