The US Senate votes today on S.22 and S.23, The Medical Care and Access Protection Act of 2006. What a crock of $#it. It’s patterned after the tort reform act that Bush passed in Texas when he was governor. Start dialing your Representative and Senator as soon as you read this.
Among other things this bill limits awards to economic damages only. Economic damages are those actual costs associated with missing work, the difference in potential income due to a forced change in career or the amount of income lost to dependents in the event of death.
So, if you make $30,000 a year and die twenty years before your expected life span because a doctor left medical instruments inside you all your family can get is $600,000. Of course if it were your baby, there are no economic damages.
Ah, you say, what about punitive damages--you know, the famous “pain and suffering”?
They will effectively no longer exist. Your family will only be able to sue for punitive damages if they can prove that the Doctor acted in a malicious and malevolent manner. In other words your family must prove that the Doctor woke up in the morning and decided to leave surgical instruments inside you to intentionally make you die of sepsis. Then, assuming they could prove that, the damages are capped at $250,000. A best case total of $850,000.
Well, shucks, your family could just put that into a 20 year annuity at 4% and collect $62,000 a year for a total of $1.25 million, right? Nope. The new law allows the insurance companies to pay out damages over time. They put the $850,000 in the annuity and pay your family 240 equal monthly payments. In other words the insurance company makes $400,000 off your settlement.
Republicans tell us it’s worth the pain to cut down on medical costs. More unmitigated bull $#it. The UT Austin Law school did research into medical malpractice in the years since the Bush tort deformity. They found:
The number of large paid claims (>$25,000 in 1988 dollars) per year was roughly constant. The number of small paid claims (<$25,000 in 1988 dollars) declined sharply.
Mean and median payouts per large paid claim were $528,000 and $200,000, respectively, in 2002 and were roughly constant over time.
Roughly 5% of paid claims involved payments over $1 million, with little annual variation.
In 2000–2002, there was an average of 4.6 paid claims per 100 practicing Texas physicians per year, down from 6.4 paid claims per 100 practicing physicians per year in 1990–1992.
The total number of closed claim files averaged 25 per 100 practicing Texas physicians per year in 2000–2002. Of these, about 80% involved no payout.
In 2002, payouts to patients were about $515 million and Texas health care spending was about $93 billion, meaning that malpractice payouts equaled 0.6% of health care spending.
Mean and median jury verdicts in trials won by patients were $889,951 and $300,593, respectively, in 2002 and showed no significant upward or downward trend.
The sum of payouts and defense cost rose by about 1% per year. Defense costs, which grew 4.4% annually, drove this increase.
Complete report here:
http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/clcjm/project2.htmlSo, here in Texas the above scenario already applies and NOTHING CHANGED except the Insurance companies’ profit margin.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
