It was a question of just how hot it was. McDonald’s served their coffee hotter than industry standards, greatly increasing the chances of third degree burns:
Consuming 88 °C coffee immediately while driving – and here I thought cell phones were distracting.
Yeah, I’ve read the details of the case several times.
She was in a car. It was parked. Supposedly, they got the coffee from a drive-thru; I’m assuming it was a disposable cup of some sort.
IIRC, there was a whole thread on this sort of case, and the question of hot vs. REALLY HOT coffee. McDonalds’ point in serving HOT coffee (and Starbucks, and many others) was that 165F coffee would taste like crap and be cold half-way through drinking the cup. It’s a feature of coffee- it’s made with pretty much boiling water. So is tea.
The question, which none of us can answer, is - did the jury decide, as experts in hot beverage service, that:
-serving a beverage as it is SUPPOSED to be served and consumed
-using the standard and commonly used disposable cup (and lid)
-customers can immediately feel the cup is soft and flexible if crushed sufficiently hard
-expecting customers to understand that the beverage was scaldingly hot, care must be taken
…this was reckless negligent and deserving of punitive damages in the millions?
Or was it a matter of “what the hell, McD has billions, give the lady some for being stupid and past the Darwin age…” Was it in “The Fortune Cookie” where the lawyer berates a poential client for not dragging herself down the street so she could sue a bigger richer store for her slip and fall?
This is a debate question. I for one am well, well aware my Starbucks is scaldingly hot. I take apropriate care. She did not. She was fortunate that her coffeee was not from Joe’s Diner.
But to the OP - this sort of accident in Canada generally is automatically covered by provincial plans; as is falling down the stairs, jackass skateboard tricks, and other injurious stupidity.
While once in a while the suggestion is “if you’re going to be reckless, you should pay” - where does it stop? Maybe skydiving or hang gliding is reckless behaviour. Is a broken leg skiing reckless behaviour? Should you have to buy special insurance to go skiing? Or would each accident require a written police report as to whether the terrain constituted reckless behaviour? Should we shut down the skiing industry? How many people have drowning accidents? Close the beaches? Ban all-terrain vehicles? Make you pay if you fell walking down the stairs because you weren’t looking? The whole “make fat people pay if they have a heart attack” can have its own thread.
Almost all injuries (or at least, MOST injuries) are a result of something stupid. It’s a waste of time to assign blame. You would spend a whole lot of time (like Americans) in court trying to apportion share blame and share of cost, and it may or may not be justice. it certainly costs a lot more for no greater benefit.
The exceptions, as previously noted - are Workers’ Comp for employment related injuries, and in some circumstances automobile accidents and other insurance-covered activities. Plus there are some medical activities (like prescription drugs, some physiotherapy) that are not covered by provincial plans.
Also note that Canadians typically are reimbursed for necessary foreign health services at the provincial rate; (commerical) travel health insurance is a very very good idea. A broken leg in the USA would probably cost you a fortune over and above the provincial reimbursement. I shudder to think I rode across the USA on a motorcycle with no thought about health insurance, in my young and foolish days. Getting home (air ambulance, if needed) is also your problem, not the provinces’.
And there’s people that think you should have to pay if you get into an accident not wearing a bicycle helmet or a seatbelt. Insurance is for stupidity as well as circumstance. I scratched up my windshield trying to remove ice with a metal screwdriver, but my insurance paid.
Medevac is something that’s covered in the US, at least by the company I work for. However, as usual read your benefits. We only cover air ambulance back to the nearest appropriate facility in the US. You could be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars if you eat a rancid taco in Mexico and want to be brought back home to Minnesota instead of the hospital in El Paso.
It seems that Americans are not getting value for money: This from U.S. versus European healthcare costs: the data | [ EpiAnalysis ].
Entirely possible, I was just trying to address what I believed to be the common perception that she was not, in fact, seriously injured. The merits of the suit are in many ways another matter entirely.
But, the whole McDonald’s coffee case is a bit of a hi-jack to this thread, so maybe we should return to the health care question?
Yeah, that’s why I’m trying to relate it to the American lawsuit/assign blame model, versus the “who cares whose fault” Canadian health care model. The tendency of juries to assign costs in lawsuits, based not on strict blame but on who has the deepest pockets, also affects health care costs. We’ve heard horror stories of silly lawsuits, that for some fields like anesthesia and obstetrics, malpractice insurance can be a huge part of the physician’s expenses.
Another point - they say 80% of health care costs are spent in the first or last 6 months of life. Not sure how big an issue his is for American elderly, but essentially Canadian senior citizens have very little to worry about over health care costs. There are programs to help cover many prescription costs; and there are no costs to treatments, doctor visits, hospital stays, etc. their biggest expense is taxi to the doctor’s office.
Not sure what is covered by Medicare for seniors in the USA, whether they have to come up with payments for some treatments. etc.
Similarly, children with problems at birth will not bankrupt their parents for intensive care, incubators, or multiple operations and extended hospital stays. Every child (like everyone) will get the same good care. Parents do not add financial worry to the other stresses.
Regarding doctors’ income, especially with respect to surgeons, those in the US can pay a huge amount for malpractice insurance. So, the figures are not quite as imbalanced as they may seem at first glance.
But that’s always my question when someone talks about doctor pay.
Some surgeons work in hospitals and have minimal overhead, it’s all covered by the hospital; most doctors, in Canada like in the USA, run a private office and collect fee for service. The difference is in Canada, there is typically only one service to bill and so the office accounting overhead is simpler and lower. The gross for their business must cover supplies, office rent, receptionist and nurse if applicable etc. (although the common model today seems to be a receptionist and office shared among 2 to 4 doctors.) toss in invisible costs like insurance, and the actual take-home “salary” is substantially lower than business gross receipts.
In the news the other day -
http://www.waittimealliance.ca/
Some wait times are getting longer, some are shorter.