Competition, Choice Key to Health Care Reform, Says Expert

And the best way to do that is comprehensive litigation reform.

I don't mind paying the doctor, at least I get something from him. What I resent is paying his lawyer and insurance agent so they can settle with the next idiot who sues him.

The reason we no longer have a hospital in our town in John Edwards and his fellow malpractice specialists.

 

If someone goes in to have carpal tunnel fixed and comes out missing an arm, who should they sue if not the doctor?

 

I am not saying doctors should not be held accountable. In your case above the medical board should investigate. If the doctor was negligent, if he did not keep his training up, did not follow proper procedure or whatever else he should loose his medical license. His practice should be taken away. He can even be found criminaly liable and be sent to jail for negligence in the maiming of the individual. BUT, the guy who lost the arm did not just win the lottery. He should not be able to sue (IMHO) in civil court for monetary damages.

You lost your arm, that is bad, but if the doctor did everything he should have then why should he be cutting you a check? You knew there was some risk when you went into surgery.

What lawyers in general and Jon Edwards specifically did in North Carolina was he sued doctors when the damages were no fault of their own. Edwards specialized in suing OB doctors when children were born with birth defects. The result was that most of the OB doctors moved out of our state. A lot of hospitals closed down and many of the ones open now will not deliver babies. Those that do still deliver babies have to hold very expensive insurance policies to settle with the lawyers. That of course results in higher costs for the consumers.

In your example above TC who do you think really pays the cost of that lawsuit? In the long run it is not the doctor or his insurance, it is the next 10,000 people that need carpal tunnel surgery. And then eventualy the cost gets so high that people who need surgery can't get it.

 

NCT, your post agrees with this email that I received yesterday!

 

Why not? If the doctor was negligent, why should he keep the money?

Besides, what about lost wages?

I'm all for reform, but if the doctor was grossly negligent, causing irreparable harm, he should be forced to pay and should have his license revoked.

The victim shouldn't be left without recourse. Besides, any criminal actions would be minimal at best.

At the bare minimum, the individual should have the cost of future treatment covered.

 

You are probably right that criminal penalties whould be minimal with our current system, but that is part of the problem.

I will go along with reparations for documented losses. That would include the cost of past and current treatment and lost wages but not legal representation. This should be part of the CRIMINAL lawsuit and it should also include jailtime for the convicted doctor. They should never be allowed to pay their way out of neglegence.

If you kill someone your fear should not be, wow this is going to cost me a lot of money, it should be, wow I am going to jail for a long time.

My beef is not with someone seeking to reclaim real losses but those who sue for million dollar settlements because they see doctor's deep pockets. In the case of Edwards he sued for birth defects that were purely heredical and in no way related to the doctor's care. That is why if you have had a child in the last 10 years they have offered to do all these prenatal tests on your baby in order to accurately forcast defects. Not because they can do anything about them short of killing your child, but they can document that you were told.

 

I agree that there are way too many frivolous lawsuits out there and reform is needed across the board. However, too many of the reform proposals I have read severely limit the patients ability to get real compensation for real losses. That is not right.

That happens in every business. So, maybe the laws in those cases need changing so that the guilty parties are the ones who pay for their mistakes and not others. Recent cases I heard of are patients having surgical instruments left in their abdomen when they were sewed up and one guy who went in to have his gallbladder removed (which is on the right side of the body) woke up finding his left kidney removed and his gallbladder still there. The hospitals covered for the doctors who are still practicing medicine without any real consequences for their actions.

 

If there were a loser pays system it would probably eliminate a lot of frivolous lawsuits in the medical field and across the board. In other words, if you file a law suit against me and you lose then you are responsible to pay my court costs, lawyer's fees, and other expenses incurred in defending myself.

 

Of course there are problems with that system as well. Lawyers would inflate their charges if someone other than their client was paying.

What about eliminating this practice where the lawyer gets a cut of the settlement if you win.