| Meanwhile, Dubya is.
. . trying to make sure that any quack doctor who
amputates the wrong leg can only be allowed to compensated
the maimed victim (or victim’s family) a maximum
of $250,000.
Priorities, priorities.
After an unsuccessful attempt to push this type of
“tort reform” through two years ago, Bush
is at it again. At a charmingly dramatic (whoever
had the idea of filling the bleachers behind Bush
with people in white lab coats / I hear Andrew Lloyd
Webber lost his costumer,) speech in Illinois, Bush
declared that Congress, “Needs to pass real
medical liability reform this year.”
He insisted that large jury damage awards as compensation
for malpractice claims are driving up the rates of
malpractice premiums so high that doctors are being
forced to shut up shop. Those nasty trial lawyers,
at it again, trying to take away your health care!
Except, as with so many of Bush’s pet topics,
he’s absolutely wrong. Tort reform, and medical
malpractice “reform,” has been a pet peeve
of mine in the past, so indulge me in some number
crunching: sixty-one percent of lawsuits brought alleging
malpractice are dropped or dismissed, so the doctors
win. (And don’t forget, where lawsuits are shown
to be frivolous, the plaintiff can be ordered to pay
the legal bills of the defense.) Thirty-two percent
of such cases are settled.
This has now become part of Bush’s stock speech,
insisting that the “Constant risk of being hit
by a massive jury award” is driving doctors
to settle cases “Even when they know they have
done nothing wrong.” Except, for that judgment
to hold true, those doctors have to assess the case
against them and decide that their behavior was worse
than 61% of other malpractice lawsuits, since their
conduct has to be worse than all those dismissed cases
to put them in danger of this huge jury payout.
Clearly, what is more likely is that the doctors
know that they would lose money by going to court
because they are in fact liable for some awful mistake
that rises to the pathetic definition of malpractice
applied by our judicial system. This leaves only seven
percent of all malpractice cases that ever make it
to trial at all, and the doctors win eighty percent
of the time!
In only seven percent of the cases actually filed
do the physicians charged with harming their patients
actually believe that the plaintiff cannot prove that
they failed to provide reasonable medical services.
(Didn’t you know? The injured—or dead—
patient has the burden of convincing a jury that the
doctor failed to act competently.) This means that
out of all malpractice suits, only 1.3% result in
a jury granting the plaintiff one of their dreaded
awards.
Yet even after the jury sets an award amount, there
are still factors that can bring the award figure
down. First, the judge in the case has discretion
to decrease the amount of damages assessed. Second,
the plaintiff and defending doctor can also negotiate
the award, as the doctor decreases the amount paid
to the plaintiff in exchange for not seeking an appeal
attempting to reverse the decision (all the while
delaying payment). All these factors combine to make
the average jury award, as reported to the National
Practitioner Data Bank (which receives all malpractice
settlement and court award information by federal
law), $235,000. That would be less, for those of you
keeping track at home, than Bush’s proposed
cap.
So who does this “medical liability reform”
protect? The Republicans would like you to believe
that the rising insurance premiums are punishing all
doctors, but this is simply not the case. Insurance
premiums have indeed been rising, but at a demonstrably
lower rate than individual health insurance premiums,
at least one percent lower in increase per year since
1997. And, despite Republican operatives insisting
that malpractice insurance has skyrocketed in the
last decade or so (to correspond with the rise in
trial litigation), recent rates of increase have been
roughly the same, or even less, than the average increase
in rates since the 1970s.
Doctors spend more on the rent for their office buildings
than they do on malpractice insurance—but I
don’t see Bush angrily insisting that the real
estate market be brought to heel.
So who, again, is protected by the “medical
liability reform?” With even the average malpractice
jury award (which again is only granted in one-point-three
percent of all cases brought alleging malpractice,)
under the proposed cap on jury awards, this
means the people that will truly benefit from such
a cap are those few and far between upon whom doctors
have truly committed a ghastly act of malpractice.
The doctor who mistakenly amputated both breasts
of a cancer-free woman, for example, or whose shoddy
paperwork results in the brain death of a child. Is
this really who Bush wants to protect? Is this really
what Congress should be spending its time on?
Not to change the subject, but the Bush has an identical
agenda for products liability tort lawsuits. Remember
the Ford Pinto, which when struck from the rear in
an auto collision, exploded in a fireball incinerating
the occupants, even in a minor impact? Ford Motor
Company knew that their gas tank design would cause
such horrible, needless deaths, yet fought each lawsuit,
settling with desperate plaintiffs only on their promise
to keep the result a secret, until some crusading
injured consumer decided to force the issue by insisting
on a trial. How about the Ford Explorer (or “Flipper”)
of a few years past? The Dalkon Shield? Thalidomide?
The Marmor Artificial Knee (hee hee—you never
even heard of that one.) Each time the corporations
intentionally unleashed a devastatingly dangerous
product on the public, knowing or soon discovering
the monstrous danger, and subsequently sought to maximize
profits by concealing, obfuscating, daunting, and
buying off injured plaintiffs.
These evil greed-hogs are tired of having to make
safe products because “trial lawyers”
take them to task - this reduces profit margins. They
are relying upon Bush and the newly “mandated”
(read: we stole the election again!) Republican majorities
in Congress to make sure that you’ll take your
punishment and shut up about it.
They’re just trying to make their rich friends
even richer, and to help you, the American Public.
Into your graves.
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