I sent this email a few weeks ago to the Medical Society of New York

MSNY is the NYS chapter of the AMA, both of whom support the capping the amount a jury can award plantiffs seeking punitive (aka economical) damages in malpractice suits.

To Whom it may concern:

I would like to cancel my membership to MSSNY and have my name removed from all mailing and contact listings affiliated with the medical society. I sent in my membership before learning of the society's aims concerning physician liability reform. After careful review of independent reports done by Weiss Rating, Public Citizen and the United States General Accounting Office, I support neither the position nor energy that MSSNY and the AMA have chosen to invest in this issue, and thus feel that it would be best for me to sever my relationship with MSSNY.

Thank you for taking the time in processing my application and welcoming me into the organization. Do not send me membership kit if you haven't already done so. I understand if my membership fee is non-refundable.

Sincerly,

Nathan Nguyen

Guess what, they still sent me the stupid membership kit. Idiots...go figure

Sorry I know nothing about it -- but it's always good to see someone take a principled stand.

Hekate

their position is to endorse legislation capping the amount of money patients receive from punitive damages that juries award in malpractice suits.

I could go on this discussion all night, but maybe tommorow morning when there's more time, but to make a long story short...such a cap would be a major blow to consumner rights and do nothing in finding a solution to throwing out the frivolous lawsuits doctors and insurance companies claim to be driving up heath care costs.

Their assumption is that patients with weak cases for malpractice suits won't sue because the financial incentives for lawyers to take those cases to trial isn't there if there is a cap on punitive damages at say $250,000.

But anyone can see that such a law is heavily tilted to protecting the financial interest of doctors and medmal insurance companies, and has little to do with protecting consumer rights.

In the 2004 Vice Presidential debate, John Edwards suggested forming 0what is essentially a medical review panel made up of doctors and lawyers whose function would be to filter out frivolous lawsuits at a reasonable cost to be placed on the plantiff making the case. That sounds like a much more reasonable solution.

... a red herring all along. Every judge has the ability now to throw out suits which are obviously frivolous. The caps are intended to eat away at the portion of the award from which lawyers can take their fees and so discourage them from accepting cases for suit--even those with merit.

Beyond this, the insurance companies have been flat out lying about malpractice suits raising the costs of health care costs (most recently, in Texas). But, people are simple-minded enough to believe it and go along with it in the hopes their insurance bill will go down (which hasn't happened at all, let alone because of such legislation or constitutional amendments).

and its comforting in an odd way to see that the medical society treats their members like they treat civilians.

Once wrote to my state medical society imploring them to check their conflict of interest problems. Their industrial insurance review committee is comprised of medical directors from a large aerospace company. When they made the determination that chemical exposures cannot cause long-term problems, their go-to gal was given an award by the medical director from Dow on behalf of the national medical society for occupational/environmental medicine.

I then caught on that these societies are established for the financial and business interests of their members.