I realize this is the Pit and not GD, but do you have a cite? The article I linked earlier indicates insurance companies have been raising prices because they’ve been losing money (not raking it in). Medical tests and prescription drugs do cost, but do they cost too much? By what standard?
Why do you assume ‘greedy’ client and not ‘heinously injured’ client? Do you feel that all clients are simply looking for a payoff?
Your second sentence is true, but notice what you are saying: some guy ranting to the air on a street corner could say something that turns out to be true.
The question is whether he’s a valid cite. And the answer is no, because he’s not reliably true.
The same holds for the WorldNetDummy.
Dismissing them is hardly a stupid and lazy reply; I’ve long since put in my hours ascertaining their unreliability. (I recall having started a thread once on the subject of the WND, but it was back when we were still on UBB, and seems to have disappeared.) Having already done my homework, it’s hardly lazy to rely on its results in evaluating a source. It would be stupid to act as if they were legit, when they aren’t.
So should the parents just be stuck with the bills and the burden if physician negligence leaves them with a child who will never be able to take care of himself? I’m missing something here.
And their defense lawyers, who draw on those same deep pockets, are more laudable? Again, I’m missing something here.
One great thing about our system is that it doesn’t rely on perfect motives; that’s why it’s as robust as it is. The idea is that checks and balances allow good to come out of a mixture of good and dubious motives.
Victims should ideally be made whole. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make a lot of money. I don’t see where it’s a sin that John Edwards became rich by making victims whole, economically speaking.
Junk Science in the Bush Administration
Latest Bush Appointee believes women should be subservient.
That guy also had to apologize for stating his belief that “conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.”
I’ll stick with the evil lawyer, thanks.
It’s only anecdotal, which I know is frowned upon here, but just as an example, when I was living in Mexico, the exact same birth control pills I was paying $23/month for in the U.S. were… are you sitting?.. $1/month.
No, that is not a typo.
ONE DOLLAR.
Same U.S. manufacturer, same brand, same exact prescription.
ONE DOLLAR.
And it’s only been recently that some insurance companies have started covering birth control pills on their drug plans – for decades we had to cover the cost 100% out-of-pocket (and many women still do).
Now, I don’t know what standards you use for comparison, but by my standards, a 2300% markup is “too much.”
As for non-anecdotal cites, a quick search reveals this recent article:
Thankfully, we do have some representatives who are working diligently to try to curtail this…
Why are drug prices so high here? Well, according to this article, “[t]he price hikes cannot be blamed on research and development, AARP political director John Rother said. The most likely culprits: huge direct-to-consumer marketing drives and flat-out greed.”
We now know what New Jersey’s malpractice payouts (as opposed to jury awards, which are frequently reduced by a judge) were in 2001 through 2003. We also know a few other things.
New Jersey had 2.97% of the US population in 2003. (8.64M/290.81M.)
The US GDP was 10.04T, 10.37T, and 10.83T in 2001, 2002, and 2003, respectively.
Health care ate up 14.4% of the GDP in 2001, or about $1.4T.
Let’s go with the 2001 figures, since we’ve got all the numbers there - and they’ll stand up to any criticism that NJ’s decline in malpractice payouts since then is a fluke of some sort.
(NJ malpractice payouts)/(NJ share of pop) = (ballpark est. of US malpractice payouts):
$214M/.0297 ~ $7.2B in 2001.
Malpractice payouts’ estimated percentage share of $1.4T in health care expenditures: one-half of one percent. Brings the whole system to a halt, huh?
Mind you, this is a genuine back-of-the-envelope bit of estimation. So I’m not going to stand up here and say authoritatively that malpractice payouts make up only 0.5% of US healthcare expenditures. OTOH, there’s no reason to think that NJ is unrepresentatively lower than average in its payouts. Some states (like Bush’s Texas) have instituted tort ‘reform’, limiting payouts in various ways; NJ isn’t one of them yet.
But what it says to me is that before I’m going to believe anything about a crisis, those claiming we’ve got one have to prove to me that it’s a good deal worse than that.
I don’t understand bashing lawyers. They don’t award the money, juries do. Shouldn’t they be bashing juries?
But Reeder, how can we blame them when Edwards, acting on behalf of the parents of a CP-affected child, misled jurors into thinking he was “communicating” with the child through the fetal heart monitor printout. They were flim-flammed, bamboozled, he tugged on their heartstrings!
Puh-leaze.
Sam
I’ll answer this and then I’m letting it go. If the damage was due to negligence and was preventable, I’d pursue a fair settlement and take it to trial if necessary.
Surprised? You shouldn’t be. I’m not stupid.
When you google “cerebral palsy lawyers” and get 45,800 hits, that seems to indicate to me that something else is going on out there. I’m sure the breast-implant lawyers are just fighting the good fight, too.
When you google “microsoft lawyers” you get 884,000 hits. It seems that they have a lot of lawyers.
Some one is going to have to explain to me how the number of hits generated by a Google search demonstrates either that claims of medical negligence causing infantile cerebral palsy are not legitimate claims or that the medical negligence cases that Senator Edwards prosecuted were not legitimate claims. Someone is also going to have to point out to me where Senator Edwards clients rejected some fair settlement offer in favor of bamboozling jurors (who being ordinary people much like you and me are just raw meat for the scheming and unscrupulous trial lawyer, putty in their very hands) in hopes of hitting an undeserved jackpot.
Let me add this to what others have said about the expense of prosecuting a plaintiff’s personal injury case, a favored technique of the defense bar is to make a potentially large case as expensive as possible with elaborate discovery, seemingly interminable depositions, repeated motions. All too often a plaintiff is driven into accepting an inadequate settlement because the expense of going forward with the case in too much for them to bear. My position is that cases go to trial as often because defendants (meaning insurers) refuse to accept a reasonable demand and lock up on low ball figure as not. My experence is that there is no significant difference between the fees paid in a contingency case and the fees recovered in a conventional time and expenses case. In the face of that many people elect to go with a contingency arrangement because of the prospect of having the lawyer share the hisk of littigation is attractive. It is worth noting that while insurers have put some restraints on defense council in the last ten or twenty years the more time a defense lawyer puts into a case the more he gets paid. There might be some impitus for defense counsel try the daylight out of every case.
The whole contingent fee thing has been a controversial matter for years. The simple fact is that the economics of the situation often mean that the only way a person with a legitimate claim can afford to press their claim is under a contingency fee arrangement. To protest that the lawyer gets too much, since verdicts are based on the extent of injury not on the extent of injury plus expenses in maintaining the lawsuit, is a matter for the client to bitch about, not the defendant. Whether the plaintiff’s lawyer works for an hourly fee, on a contingency or for fee makes no difference in determining the amount of damages.
Punitive (a.k.a. exemplary) damages, that bug-a-boo of the uninformed, are rare as hen’s teeth. Negligence or fault are the basis for recovery of economic compensatory damages. Almost universally punitive damages must be supported by a showing that the defendant was wanton and reckless, guilty of gross negligence or acted from malice. Thus, were Lamar to run a stop sign an T-bone me my chances of recovering punitive damages from him are pretty much nil. Were he drunk and a blood examination showed that my chances would be increased… Had he said to the bartender just before he got in his car “That Spavined Gelding better stay out of my way,” then my chances of recovering punitive damages in excess of compensatory damages are significantly increased. In medical malpractice cases it is the rare physician indeed to shows up drunk or expresses animosity toward his patient as he hones his scalpel. It is, as someone once said, the difference between being tripped over and being kicked. Even a dog can tell the difference.
D’ya ever think that it’s because it’s such a big problem? No?
BTW, while you are pursuing your fair settlement, how much cooperation do you think the doctor’s laywers are gonna give you? *Especially * if you don’t have a really good lawyer working for you?
Heh. I was waiting for that. 
The water pistol? Not as fun as you might think.
The water pistol? Not as fun as you might think.
So are the cites I dug up that stated there was a known problem, that stated what the criteria was for diagnosing the problem, and that stated how many people are affected per year worthless because I went to Ebscohost instead of Google?
Well, this is the gathering to ask, I suppose.
These “trial lawyers”? Are they required to wear some kind of identifying marker if they hang out with real lawyers? Are their features more ferretlike, or rodential? That stuff about filing their teeth into points, thats urban myth, right? When you guys tell lawyer jokes, is it “trial lawyer jokes?”.
Just for the record, Abraham Lincoln was a trial lawyer too and he muddles along as president. He wasn’t even particularly evil.
It’s not like Edwards is an oil scion or anything really perverted like that.