Easy scapegoat, ultimately minor. I'm surprised that free market martin wants to regulate a system of equity. How do you determine how best to apportion damages (or preclude suits?) Who is to say, the government? Give me a break. if it's not profitable to pursue a legal remedy, attorneys won't do it. So the problem is either the doctors or the juries, not the alleged tort.
i am in over my head on this topic, but i figure the system would work better if doctors had almost no legal liability. you go to a doc, your risk. if they screw up, tough, it happens. no courts, no payouts. too bad.
No legal liability? Not a chance. I want a a doctor to care very much about avoiding criminal negligence. Any professional or tradesman must have an appropriate degree of legal responsiblity for their work. To avoid responsibility is to reward incompetence.
right, but a human is a crapshoot, you never know what could happen with em. i figure we can insure ourselves if we are worried, and find doctors that are competent. that way, we dont have the pre-installed cost of the doctor's insurance, we can opt out and bear the risk ourselves (or not, by buying insurance personally). right now, we all have to pay docs more to cover their malpractice insurance. i certainly could be wrong here, so take advantage of, it doesnt happen often. i dont like that all docs have to have this malpractice insurance that raises costs for everyone.
Part of my job includes technical (claims handling) auditing of 6 offices that handle nothing but Medical Malpractice claims. There are abuses by plaintiff attorneys because of the potential for a large settlement/verdict. It seems that, unless a baby is born completely normal and without any birthing complications, there will be a lawsuit. Oftentimes, it is completely without merit, but no medical professional is exonerated until, literally, hundreds of thousands of dollars in defense costs are expended. Anyone who looked at the mother during the 9 month pregnancy will be brought into the fray. OB/GYN Healthcare Liabilty insurance is the most costly of all. There are reforms which help, including caps on damages (La's is $500K) and the requirement that a Medical Review Panel approve the claim for litigation. To me, the biggest abuses are in the area of Nursing Home Care. I see countless claims where NH employees and doctors are sued following the death of a resident. These are patients that enter the nursing home in their 80s and 90s because they are too sick and feeble to live alone and have so many infirmities that they are bedridden before they even get there, yet, invariably, the families scream that the negligence of staff and medical personnel "killed my mother", something that idiot juries love the throw big money at. While Med Mal plaintiff attorneys are generally highly skilled, there are a lot of "Dewey, Cheatham and Howe" firms that handle the Nursing Home cases. Usually, Doctors have a "consent to settle" clause in their policy, so the cases often go to trial because the Doc won't admit he was negligent. I see a far greater percentage of defense verdicts in Med Mal cases than I do in other areas of Insurance claims (Trucker Liability, Construction Claims, etc.) My personal opinion is that there is a need for more tort reform, but it'll never happen, because most legislators are lawyers. On the other hand, the Insurance industry doesn't want too much reform, because it's bad for business. Who's going to buy a policy if there's no risk?
Good post, with inside information. I wish I was smart enough to devise a way to eliminate clearly frivolous lawsuits, like the ones you mention. The challenge is legislating in such a way that people that suffered an injury are not precluded from pursuing a claim. Also, given the way insurance coverage is set up for most folks, it creates a less-than-perfect market for doctor services. So without entirely free market pressures, there has to be another financial incentive for doctor's to do quality work. At this time, litigation or the threat of it, is a good check.
The challenge is with the judicial system, I think. In engineering or archetectural lawsuits, the boundary between responsible and negligent is often a clear line and everyone can see it. In medical malpractice, the boundary is often broad and gray and shifting. A judge can quickly see that some suits are frivolous and toss them, but he would have to be an MD to do it confidently on medical matters. They end up relying on medical advisors . . . and then the lawyers challenege them and the whole expensive and needless routine that SabanFan describes follows. I imagine finding people with both medical and law degrees to be judges for malpractice cases will be impossible. That would be the ideal situation--MD Judges that have the technical knowledge to toss frivolous lawsuits early, yet recognize legitimate claims.
