Doctors: Will you call tort reform by it's rightful name?

The right has mobilized a corps of Dr.s "clamoring" for tort reform because of rising malpractice insurance costs. This seems highly fishy to me.

What they're writing is a
"Big Pharmaceuticals Protection Bill" to cover the asses of their donors when ill-researched, heavily marketed, FDA approved (wink,wink) pills start killing people in hard-to-hide numbers.

The insurance industry is making record profits, and you and your patients are the victims of this hand in glove arrangement.

Instead of hurting the patient even more, why not get rid of those bad doctors?

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>He turned it down! He is getting out of the baby delivery business. He is going straight GYN because of the cost of insurance and fear of being sued into the grave.<

I believe that the term you're looking for is "perinatologist". Interesting that he is "getting out of the baby delivery business" before even graduating from school.

High-risk pregnancies are a fascinating issue, that's for sure. I used to work in the industry, so I can safely say that I am of two minds about the pregnant woman's ability to go after the doctor if there is a problem with either the pregnancy or the resulting birth. Most patients follow their doctor's instructions and have a very happy outcome. There are the small minority who think "bed rest" is a suggestion, and sue the doctor if there are subsequent problems.

I have a store that offers merchandise attractive to pregnant women and new grandmas. Within the past 24 hours, I have had two different women in my store who both informed me that they were on "bed rest", one of which scared the living hell out of me because she was obviously in distress.

Julie

it is just that the big ticket doctors feel they are paying more. They do need to reform a system. Unfortunately with "tort reform" doctors are being used as insurance industry tools. They are convinced caps are the answer.

"Lie" works for me.

Conservative Agenda to Un-Make American Law Examined in New Book by Rutgers-Camden Law Prof

CAMDEN -- President George W. Bush’s campaign promise to curb lawsuits and enact tort reform is more than just political posturing. In fact, it’s just the tip of the iceberg that is about to sink the rights of everyday citizens under the American law.

It’s part of a very real conservative movement to reduce the legal protections available to ordinary Americans while increasing legal benefits for HMOs, drug companies, car manufacturers, and others in positions of wealth and power. And, after an undercover 25-year campaign, the movement is stronger than ever before.

In his newly published book, “Un-Making Law: The Conservative Campaign to Roll Back the Common Law” (Beacon Press, September 2004), Jay M. Feinman, a professor at the Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, offers a sobering assessment of how the laws that protect everyday citizens are being systematically and deliberately dismantled.

<snip>

"This attack on the common law is part of a broader conservative agenda to reduce the ability of government to promote the common good. It espouses an ideology that claims that inequalities of wealth and power are natural, and that a legal system that enables or enhances those inequalities is nonpolitical and just. And that simply isn’t the legal system that every American alive today was born into or grew up under.”

http://ur.rutgers.edu/medrel/viewArticle.html?ArticleID=4115

This is exactly right. And the more these people privatize everything, from school, to health care, to social security; the less power we'll have. Everything will be in the hands of corporations and we will have willingly given away our rights to hold them accountable. Through "tort reform". Just get in the minds of people who would concoct such a cynical plot against this country. It's beyond frightening.

The insurance industry lost money in the stock market crash and made it up by raising doctor's malpractice insurance. They they got doctors (who were more tan willing to try and limit their exposure for malpractice) to clamour for tort reform. The insurance industry and repugs are using doctors as public pawns to try and get tort reform passed.

The fact is that the number of malpractice claims hasn't increased in the past 10 years. There is no valid proof that malpractice claims have caused the increase in malpractice premiums or healthcare costs. Of course, the repugs are trying to demonize trial lawyers because they stand up for the little guy against corporations. Also, trial lawyers account for about a third of the Democratic Party's funding.

It's among the highest in any industry.

when tort reform is exactly that. Putting caps on lawsuits, etc. It is regulating the trial lawyer industry and even worse regulating a citizens right to sue for malpractice.

against malpractice. Plain and simple.

professionals, doctors and lawyers, have allowed the corporate industries of pharmaceutics and insurance to triangulate them and to turn on the patient/client, the very people they take oaths to protect and not to harm.

that most doctors don't realize that their interests are _not_ identical with the insurance company.

Here in Nevada they lobbied against an initiative which would have rolled back insurance rates if certain things didn't happen. It didn't pass. They didn't even pay attention to the fact that California's recent limits on damage awards haven't brought down their doctors' rates one bit.

Sur, the insurance cos. can threaten to pull out of a state. so what if they do? Doctors could probably get better coverage and lower payments with a state-sponsored program,

by simply pulling out core services (you know, those routine quick check things like a strep culture or well child visit or other such general care stuff) and charge a fairly affordable basic fee that could be paid easily out of pocket. As far as I'm concerned, the only time you should need to have high medical expenses is for someone with chronic or catastrophic illness. Perhaps the way to go is to get patients, lawyers, and doctors to triangulate the corporate folks and reset the market. Unfortunately, I think that too many doctors think that they are entitled to a gravy train because of the type of work they do. I think it is true for attorneys as well. You see these professionals when you are most vulnerable and in need. It is immoral that collusion for profit's sake should be considered SOP at such times.

Most people seems to think that its easy to prove medical malpractice, and the mere threat of a lawsuit will shot you down. Not so.

First of all, the standard for malpractice is:

§ 7.02 Medical Malpractice <104-110>

The standard of care to which physicians are held is set by the custom of their profession. The physician must possess and use the knowledge and skill common to members of the profession in good standing. This standard demands of the physician minimal competence. In the medical malpractice context, liability flows from the physician's failure to conform to the profession's customary practice. Conversely, if the defendant doctor adheres to customary practice, she cannot be found to have committed malpractice.

http://www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool/study/outlines/word/torts.doc

In layman's terms, it mean that a doctor is only liable if his conduct is beyond the custom of his profession. Not if he did something that another doctor wouldn't do, but only if he did something no other doctor would do.

They are trying to protect their clients' right to full and fair compensation.

Cheap doctors, cheap drugs, and nothing the patients can do about it... It's Corporate America's dream healthcare system.

If you want to be horrified, look at how medicine is practiced in the prison systems. (Yes, I know, some prison system medical people work for good, altruistic reasons... but...) In some prisons the doctors are there because they can't get jobs anywhere else.

The status of doctors is collapsing in the same way that the status of public school teachers collapsed. A lot of qualified people don't go into these professions because, more and more, the working conditions suck.

Doctors who kowtow to big business and right wing politicians remind me of teachers who won't join a union because it isn't "professional."
Well sorry honey, even if you are a teacher, a doctor, or other "professional," to the guys with the power you are just another worker bee, no different than the folks working on the assembly line or in the cubicles.

eom

address this problem by 'weeding' out their colleagues who are causing their rates to rise. From what I understand, CA has had tort reform since the 70's and to this day have increasing insurance costs. This tells me that medical malpractice isn't the 'big' problem here. This issue cannot be addressed by telling the patients that if they are maimed/killed at the hands of a health care professional that their lives 'only' should have a certain dollar value placed upon them. Sadly enough, it's getting to the point that having a medical license equals a license to kill without penalty. Of course, this doesn't apply to the good, decent doctors out there. Furthermore, I think health care professionals need to 'take a stand' against their counterparts that are hurting them and not the 'patient'.

and Wyoming is pretty much one big rural area.

It is getting very challenging for good doc's to practice some specialties here. For instance, the doc's at St John's here in Jackson probably deliver 80 or 90 babies a year, total. There's one specialist OB/GYN practice here and they pay the same base rate as a practice in Denver that delivers ten times that many kids. It won't take much to have them decide to stop providing OB services. Note that the senior physician in the practice is seen as the provider of choice for about 90% of the women in town, she is NOT a crappy doc. The problem is not limited to OB/GYN - doc's here pay a base rate that is way out of keeping with the number of patients they see.

BUT, that is not to say that tort reform is the issue, and, amazingly enough, most of the local doc's banded together to back a 'tort reform' amendment to the Wyoming constitution. Our state constitution specifically makes it illegal to limit a citizen's right to seek redress so a ballot initiative was required to amend. The initiative failed. All of a sudden there are about a dozen other good ideas on how to address the issue, none of which look like 'tort reform', and the doc's are lining up behind their choices from this new range of possibilities. Once the 'tort reform' herring was off the table they moved on to other solutions.

Richard Ray - Jackson Hole, WY

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