Reply #45: Sure trial lawyers make huge amounts.... [View All]

[ChairOne]

... and you can thank the medical establishment for that as well. If doctor would police themselves, preventable medical injuries would decrease hugely. Without such injuries, there wouldn't be as many suits. Without as many suits, the lawwyers lose.

I am certainly not in the lawwyers' back pockets on this. It's the 500,000 preventable medical injuries I'm against. If the medical community were, contrary to fact, doing everything it could do to minimize these, then I might be open to other remedies for the medmal insurance problem.

But they aren't, in fact, doing everything they can. And that's just about as big an understatement as is possible to make. It's much closer to the truth to say that they absolutely refuse to do anything about them. Nothing except grab for Bush's anti-consumer-get-out-of-jail-free-card, of course.

The reports provided in this thread give all the numbers on the issue - I don't commit them to memory. There is no flood of malpractice litigation - to the contrary, doctors are the beneficiaries of a large claims *gap*. Very few frivolous lawsuits are filed, and essentially none get past the initial stages. There is no problem with "runaway" jury awards - after being reviewed by medical panels, awards are acknowledged as being commensurate to the harm done.

Doctors need to police themselves, plain and simple. I fully admit that they are the most *appropriate* people to do this. But the fact that they *refuse* to do this leaves it to the legal system.

But if you wanna stick to your guns, saying that it's just the lawyers, fine. Then get rid of the *reason* for the lawyers in the first place - the medical harm done to the public. Get rid of the 1% of doctors that account for 20% of malpractice claims (guesstimate numbers; consult the docs).

EDIT: You said: "Reform must balance out each side...". Wonderful. Give me the "balanced" reform that responds to 500,000 preventable medical errors. Tell me how limiting the harmed's right to seek redress "balances" 500,000 preventable medical errors. And then tell me about the "balance" associated with the fact that only 20% of doctors convicted of malpractice 3 or more times are sanctioned *in any way*, let alone barred from practice. Yah, let's be honest.