Lies about the med mal "crisis"

Lies and the lying liars who tell them, part deux...here's a link to a Washinton Post story about a recent GAO study debunking the lie told by all tort "reformers"...read, and enjoy:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15752-2003Sep15.html?referrer=emailarticlepg

"Premiums paid by doctors, Hunter's study found, "do not correspond to increases or decreases in payouts," but "rise and fall in concert with the state of the economy. . . . Insurance companies raise rates when they are seeking ways to make up for declining interest rates and market-based investment losses.""

Considering Bush has been campaigning that "frivalous lawsuits" make insurance rates go up.
I want to puke every time I see a speech by this guy where he whores himself out for insurance companies.

it's a profit motive nightmare.

Single payer healthcare, call it socialized medicine if you like, is what we need. The people at the bottom of my post are the ones who have said the same. At this point I will not support any candidate who hasn't addressed the idea. No more patched together insurance company plans like the ones the other candidates are talking about.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=10825&forum=DCForumID61&archive=

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Why it matters: The medical system is a leading killer
LAST EDITED ON Jan-12-03 AT 08:06 PM (ET)
In 1998, reporters Fred Schulte and Jenni Bergal at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel wanted to find deaths from cosmetic surgery, but their reporting had hit a dead end.

Doctors hinted at horrendous problems that a colleague was having, then provided no details. And, coroners said they knew of no deaths from liposuction, a supposedly safe cosmetic surgery that makes people thinner.

All that changed when Schulte and Bergal searched records where the bodies were piling up: the county morgue. The slow, painstaking review unearthed striking cases. The reporters identified even more deaths from liposuction when they investigated hundreds of malpractice suits

snip
Two studies in the IOM report estimate that between 44,000 and 98,000 people are killed each year from medical errors.2
Medication errors are thought to cause 7,000 deaths annually – more than the 6,000 deaths that occur each year in the workplace.2 The annual cost of medication errors is at least $2 billion.2
Total costs for preventable medical mistakes, including lost wages and extra health costs, are estimated to be between $17 billion and $29 billion a year.2 Preventable mistakes in hospitals alone are thought to cost from 2 percent to 4 percent of national health expenditures.2
Forty-two percent of randomly selected Americans said they had personal knowledge of a medical error that had happened to themselves, a relative or a friend, according to an October 1997 poll financed by the National Patient Safety Foundation, an independent group established by the American Medical Association

http://www.ahcj.umn.edu/qualityguide/chapter2.html

Note: This is an extremely LONG read about the entire medical system and the way it markets and delivers care. It debunks much of the tort-reform argument by demonstrating how very few cases of malpractice actually see their day in court, let alone get filed. It has every aspect of medical care covered, including reporting of medical care. It goes into great detail about the financial motivation to ignore KILLER medicine. It is a MUST READ!


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But DO notice Repubs are NOT against ALL LAWSUITS:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=18102&forum=DCForumID61&archive=

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