As if to bolster the note below on the state of medicine in the Western world, Medpundit offers this report ("Takin' it to the People": tort reform) on attempt by The People of the USA to slap down the silliness of malpractice lawsuits. Wyoming, Nevada, Oregon, and Florida folks have had it with astronomical awards for malpractice suits. I guess it's beginning to dawn on people that, if you penalize doctors beyond all sense of proportion just to feed the ravenous trial lawyers, there may be a lot fewer practicing doctors down the road. Let's set a good precedent: go People!
suing a doctor sucks. Suing an HMO, on the other hand... it pays to take a close look at some of this stuff. I haven't, in this case, but there is something of a history of consumer protection being threatened on the grounds of limiting liability to responsible business people. Judges can throw out frivolous suits, why change things?
ReplyDeleteMy impression from this article (and others) is that the reform is intended to curb the nebulous "damages" (non-fiscal) awards. This translates to me as somebody being awarded, say, $200,000 if a screw-up resulted in that much loss of income plus additional medical costs, vs. somebody saying "and the mental anguish brings it to $1.5 million".
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