Huh? Millions of dollars helps ease suffering? Pay for their treatment, give them $500,000, discipline the friggin doctor, and give the damn lawyer $50,000 instead of millions, which should keep them away. There is simply too much financial incentive for the lawyers to bring these cases, we must eliminate it.
You want punitive damages? Fine, give them to charity.
As said before Doctors have plenty incentive, if they fuck up THE PATIENT DIES. you can’t get anymore high stakes then that. If there was an OBVIOUS reason the person died then action should be taken, otherwise chalk it up to the tragedy of life. Ditto, for cases where they don’t die.
Yes, god forbid healthcare got cheaper, and doctors had more leeway to do things right, instead of spending 99% covering their asses so they don’t get sued from existence. :rolleyes:
I doubt we would have people dropping dead left or right either. Sure some eggs would get broken, but on average things would be better then they currently are.
I missed what I proposed regarding OB/GYNs being responsible for a patient for the next 18 years.
Note. Not equivalent. Picky point. I know the difference is vast, and they really only serve to keep the person from psychologically feeling that people keep looking at her.
No, I don’t think a lawyer would touch it. Does it mean people wouldn’t try? Not really.
Similar to criminal rehabilitation. We don’t fine all things. Malpractice to me is too close to Norway’s speeding fines. They are variable, based on how much you make. Also, you aren’t making the doctor pay, you are making the doctor’s insurance company pay. They raise premiums on everyone, including the offender. Surely you can see this. And yes, if they make a mistake, training them to do it right will at least reinforce how they should be doing it. We students can get sued as students, while we are learning. None of the mistakes are intentional then, but strangely people feel they need to teach the student a lesson or punish them, when they are trying to learn medicine. http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/2509.html
This is for reporting ethical violations, but the idea is similar. The AMA recommends going to state medical associations, since they work under the AMA. Similar to talking to your state representative before talking to the national one.
Because, as I’ve implied, I don’t think it is the right way to deal with it. Unless the civil case only tried to suspend or pull their license, but not sue for large sums of money. I personally thing $500K noneconomic would be about as high as I could see reasonable. Therefore, California actually seems a little too conservative for me, but I think I’ll live.
And I don’t think of it as mercilessly draconian. It is a step in the right direction. If, as you claim, it would be swinging the problem in the other direction, then it would still be better. Inasmuch as if doctors are not there, society goes down. If patients bear the brunt of medicine, then there will still always be patients. I don’t think it would leave patients without a means of aid.
So, you’ve detailed how to discipline the attorneys. How would the doctor be disciplined? And are you proposing that this should be the thing to do, no matter what? No offense, but fuck that noise.
Sometimes this would be the perfect thing to do. But why should you or I or anyone get to tell someone what to do with money awarded to them?
Well, I honestly don’t recall you saying that doctors have this incentive. And who gets to determine what’s obvious? I’ll go out on a limb here and say that you would frown on the ABA having that power. Would you want the doctor involved to make that determination? A panel of doctors not affiliated withe case? I know that I would be uncomfortable being the final arbiter.
Hyperbolize much? And what do you have that demonstrates that healthcare would get cheaper?
How would I discipline the doctor? I dunno, but I would focus more on fixing their lack of skills, or determining if they are fit to practice. I don’t think raising (along with everyone else) their insurance premiums makes a difference. I would like to see something, if possible, that would hold the individual doctor accountable. Limiting them to certain tasks or to some type of temporary probation, etc etc.
Because the money isn’t awarded to them in the first place, it’s awarded to a charity. As far as punitive damages are concerned, there’s no difference, the punishment is making them pay up, not where it goes.
No, they shouldn’t.
Um, no, that would be kind of silly wouldn’t it?
Now that’s a wacky idea, some people that can objectively look at what has taken place. No emotional junk science appeals to 12 dummies, that have nothing to do with fixing the problem.
These people have lives entrusted to them, I’m sure anything else is gravy compared to that.
What’s the opposite of doctors getting the shit sued out of them and sky high insurance rates? Doctors getting away with murder on the cheap of course.
I don’t see any proposal, you’ll have to spell it out for me.
Take note qcomdrj: If a lawyer wouldn’t touch a case; if this lawyer would, in fact, laugh my daughter right the fuck out of his office (as well he should), then no suit is brought, and nobody is harmed. This is what’s known as a good thing.
And if you wanna scale judgments to what a doctor makes, fine. Of course, I think that you might change your tune if you were to move to a major urban area. Also, I honestly don’t know, but I believe that malpractice insurance is a fairly new phenomenon, nu? Let a bunch of good doctors get together and bargain for their insurance rates, then.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I seem to recall someone saying that the AMA is similar to AARP; people can join, but are under no obligation to do so. If so, how is complaining to the state med association going to accomplish a damned thing if the doctor in question is not affiliated with the AMA?
Then you oughta live somewhere besides TN. Say CA perhaps.
So, setting a cap of $500 large is a step in the right direction? Not here in reality it ain’t. And a med student thinking that it would be an improvement is hardly news. If things don’t improve, d’you think that doctors everywhere will up and walk away? Leaving people to wallow in their own crapulence? Will you walk away? I dunno how far into your studies you are, but surely you knew the situation when you began, yes?
BwaHaHa…you obviously don’t know shit about law. Do you know how fucking much it costs for a regular civil trial, let alone a sicentific-based or medically-based trial?
For a week-long civil trial here with no experts, an attorney will rack up over $50K in fees. That doesn’t cover more than the 7-14 days of preptime and research needed to get your case rolling. FOr a malpractice case it would be 3-5 times that in expenses and research and preparation, not to mention experts’ fees.
They’re high. They’re getting higher. I want that to stop. Ergo, I am working towards it. If I decided to not become a doctor due to malpractice, I would, in the words of another poster, become cynical.
And no, not all doctors are part of the AMA, but more are part of their state MAs. Even so, the state MAs cannot act, other than publishing blacklists. This would likely amount to libel. They can recommend to the state legislature that this doctor lose his or her license. Kind of like the NRA cannot enforce gun laws. It is a step in the right direction for the patient to report the patient. The more reports (or the seriousness of them) can make a difference in one way or another. People in the state MAs are on the licensing boards usually. In california, the cap is already 250K, I don’t see how my 500K cap is not acceptable there.
If doctors could bargain for malpractice premiums, I think it would have been done by now. That would be similar to a group of drivers getting together and getting car insurance premiums cheaper. Doesn’t work to a great degree.
As for lawyers laughing people out of their offices, how is it that people who break into houses and get hurt in the process can sue the homeowners, and in some freakish cases win? Because there are always some (a minority) of lawyers that will take any case that can gain them prominence or possibly win large sums of money. I think if punitive damages went to charity, and the lawyers didn’t get their percentage of that, then these enormous lawsuits would slowly die off (or quickly). Don’t you? The ones that serve the greater good would still occur though.
Obviously I pulled that figure out of thin air, the point is do give them something slightly less then winning the freakin mega lotto. Besides $50,000 bucks for a week or two of work ain’t shabby, I’m sure they’ll live.
Now considering that these cases sometimes take 2-3 years to develop(our most recent case was 3 years in the making), with absolutely zero retainer or payments coming from the client, and considering in the final weeks before trial you must not perform any work on other cases in your office(or on your desk), $50,000 or some other paltry, arbitrary number doesn’t quite cut it.
Great. Let’s hold the individual doctor accountable. That way, when he makes a mistake, he’ll be financially ruined if a judgment goes against him. Or do you think that no one should be able to sue an individual for a mistake that affects the plaintiff’s life? Because that’s the only way that I see to keep the number of doctors from decreasing pretty markedly. And again, is malpractice insurance a newish thing? I really would like to know.
I’m honestly at sea here. The way that I originally read your post, I thought that you said that plaintiffs should give their settlements to charity. Are you now advocating a change in the way that legal settlements are disbursed? So that settlements are given directly to charity? If so, which charity?
No offense, but I have a problem with self-policing. Don’t care for it when the police do it, don’t imagine that I’d be all that wild about doctors doing it. You can see what a success it’s been inre the Pentagon.
Here’s where I’ll have to insist that you show me one single instance of me saying that the current system is bug free. Just one. . .again, that’s what I thought. To repeat, Hyperbolize Much?
Absolutely not! I insist on being called “Waste”!
From where I sit, it appears that you don’t want this to stop, so much as turn it around 180 degreees and stub out a cigarette on it’s ass. That, to my way of thinking, is only an improvement for one group, doctors. Because for all of the dumbassed suits that you hear about, the fact of the matter remains that there are people being seriously injured due to the actions of physicians. And I’m just kinda crazy and Pollyannish enough to think that when they are harmed, people should be able to sue for damages.
Sounds to me like the state MA is as toothless a tiger as the AMA.
Y’know, this example has dick all to do with my daughter walking into an attorneys office and desiring to sue a doctor because she has Down Syndrome. That was the situation that you claimed was plausible, back on page 4 or 5 of this thread if memory serves. And you are quite simply wrong. More complicatedly, you are so fulla shit you squeak going into a turn.
Well, yeah it does. It is an analogy (and not even a hyperbole). Ridiculous and/or frivolous cases are taken into lawyers and they do sue for them. I bet there is a lawyer somewhere who would take parents to court in a case where one child had some genetic deficiency, went ahead without counseling and had another child with a deficiency. Even one not as significant as Down’s syndrome. You can’t honestly sit there and say “No lawyer would ever take any case where there was a reasonable chance they could make money”. In your daughter’s case, no, I doubt she would be able to sue, but that would likely have something to do with the fact that the phenotype of Down’s precludes adult reasoning to a degree. If someone with CF, that could argue eloquently against their parents after their first child had CF wanted to sue, I don’t think it an impossibility.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t be able to sue for damages. Just not ridiculously high, lottery winning punitive damages for something that cannot be measured (pain and suffering are not the same for everyone).
So, I want really high malpractice awards to stop. If I wanted all of them to stop, then my position would be “I want to make all malpractice suits null and void”. People deserve to have their salaries and medical bills paid if they are injured. They do not deserve to be independently wealthy. Can you see that?
No, see, it’s a crappy analogy. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue at hand.
Yes. And they get laughed out of court a helluva lot, too. You don’t honestly believe that every suit goes to trial, do you?
Great. And that has what to do with my daughter (remember her?) suing a doctor? Y’know, that little hypothetical you came up with back in the mists of when this thread was still, ostensibly, about it’s title? Is the answer dick all? Why, my goodness gracious yes!
It’s Down Syndrome. What kind of third world med school are you going to, anyway?
No, but I can guaran-goddamned-tee you that if an attorney looks at the particulars of a case, and knows that it will be shat upon by a court, then he’s gonna tell you to get on with your life and deal with it.
I once again challenge you to find me a single attorney who would take the case that you hypothesized, and which I gave a persona to. Bugger all to do with phenotypes, it’s known as common sense.
Maybe, but I kinda doubt it.
Then. . .what? What is the figure that you think someone’s pain and suffering is worth? Is it still $500K? Is that an absolute? Period? No matter what else might happen or be the case? What if the plaintiff is 8 months old? 8 years? 18? 88? Are you gonna want to start decreasing that cap if the injured party is aged and infirm? Will it (heh) increase if the party is very young?
And $500000. Remember? $50000? Don’t they still deserve $500000?
If a doctor fucks up during my surgery, I will sue the bastard as far as the law allows. Remember when I said that doctors (well, surgeons in this case, but you get the idea) need to go to great lengths to make sure that someone isn’t harmed? Or, if said doctor screws up then he (why is it that all my doctors are “he”? I know that there are female doctors, I’ve seen them) gets to take responsibility for what transpired. If I fuck up in my job, then I take responsibility. Even if the fuck up wasn’t really my fault. If I’m the one holding the potato when the bell goes off, then it’s my ass on the line. And if the fuck up is big enough, I run the risk of losing my job.
Likewise, if a police officer beats the crap outta me and I’m fortunate enough to have a junior director catch it on tape, I’m gonna own that sonofabitch by the time everything is done. This stands true for anyone who can cause serious damage to me and/or mine through negligence. Not a common fuckup, say, that my appendix is on the opposite side of where everyone else’s is, but negligence. And if I wind up in an iron lung or, fates forfend (well, my fates) lose my ability to type on a message board, then I will live in extreme comfort for the rest of my days.
PS - Do you have any idea how new a phenomenon malpractice insurance is? I’ve asked that twice (thrice now) and not seen a response. Do you know?
PPS - I was just giving you shit inre calling me “Waste”. It’s the nom that I’ve used online for some time, and frankly, reading “GL” was a little unnerving. But I don’t care what you call me. 'Samatter of fact, I’ll bet you use certain terms that would make me blush when you read my missives. C’est la vie and all like that. . .
Actually, I was only calling you names that would make you blush back in the day when you would call me “sport” “sparky” “pal” and “son”. I don’t look at your posts and think you are anything other than an adversary (worthy or even better than). Sort of like attorneys who are friends outside of court. I bet you and I could get along (getting rid of the really stupid people). I certainly don’t hate you or dismiss your ideas.
That being said.
The loss of the " 's " was recent. It is more commonly known outside of medicine as Down’s. You, having a direct relationship with it, know it as Down.
I am aware of both nomeclatures. Similar to Huntingdon’s and Alzheimer’s (both have the " 's " dropped recently, part of medicine’s attempt to remove proper names from the textbooks. Down is also known as trisomy 21.)
Yes, depending on the particulars. Not everyone deserves it, but some certainly do. Nobody deserves millions.
It’s not new, but the massive awards are. And doctors cannot live without it. Students also cannot live without it. However, premiums in excess of $100K are absurd, yet present in many fields. Once again, if you’re trying to punish the doctor, then you would tend to think malpractice insurance is bad, because in the cases where doctors have it, you’re not punishing them. You are punishing the insurance company (they pay the settlement after all).
As will the rest of us (you had to see that coming). Why is it that you feel you should live a better life than you would have before the accident. Accidents should not be seen as windfalls. If that were the case, then why avoid a car accident that would be someone else’s fault. You would be able to sue and become comfortable due to someone else’s negligence. The system now falls too heavily on the doctors. I’m not saying it should fall on the patients, but it shouldn’t be forcing people out of states and out of fields they have worked in for years.
Yes, but is there ever a chance your responsibility could cost you or your insurance company millions? Would you continue working if insurance became 50% of your salary, or would you try to find a similarly paying job that didn’t have the same premiums.
Well, then, yer not gonna be too pleased later in this post.
Well, see, when something has been ongoing for well over a decade, then classifying it as “recent” is, well, bullshit. And I gotta tell ya, you’d be hard pressed to find someone further outside of medicine than me.
Y’know what’s really astounding here? I’ve known that DS is AKA trisomy 21 for longer than you’ve been able to buy booze. Hell, longer than you’ve been getting laid. I daresay I knew that before your voice changed. If you wanna be patronizing, just ask me how to do it in such a way that you’re not a humorless schmuck. I’m chock fulla advice on that.
Depends on how badly our hypothetical doctor fucked up. Also, I notice that you failed to address whether that $500K slides depending on the age of the injured party. Why is that?
How not new is not new? Is it 10 years old? 20? 30? Also, what happened fifty years ago when a doctor screwed up and someone was harmed? Did the injured party suck it up, rub some dirt in it and move on?
Okay, here’s a question: If you sue a doctor because he leaves a sandwich in your gut and win a settlement, his malpractice insurance pays, no? Does he then become someone whose coverage is dropped? How, precisely, does this work? This question is probably geared more toward Qadgop, since I gather he’s been doctorin’ for a while.
Eh. . .as a smart-assed comment, it was simply adequate.
Would the accident have happened if the doctor didn’t fuck up? If the doctor fucks up and I wind up in an iron lung, then my ability to live the life I had previously is pretty hampered, wouldn’t you agree? If I can’t live an identical life, and I now have to learn to play the piano upside down, then the things that will make that easier wil most assuredly be mine.
Who says that I don’t go about looking for car accidents to get involved in? I was out of work for a while, and most of the 7-11s in town recognize me.
But see, you want to make it fall on the patients when you say, “Nobody deserves more than $500000.” How do you know whether or not someone deserves more? And as I said about self-policing, it makes my feet itch.
Dunno. But then, in the course of my job, I don’t hold someone’s life in my hands. When you do that, the level of responsibility goes up quite a bit.
Not doubting your distance from medicine, but you aren’t distanced from Down. Here are a couple “recent” uses of Down’s. They apparently use the 's in the UK almost exclusively. I would consider if it is present in NEJM to be evidence that that name is still used. http://www.downs-syndrome.org.uk/ http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/349/15/1471
I wasn’t patronizing with the name, I was just telling you that you are aware of yet a third name for the same condition. Is one more correct than the other?
Because that is included in economic damages. Lost wages, and the like. Not punitive damages.
I guess 30 years is about right. Has inflation of pay increased 300% since then? Why have settlements gone up that much or more?
Self policing probably wouldn’t work, I’ll agree with you there, at least until the very old doctors are gone. Would giving the AMA some teach work, likely. Do lawsuits work, no. Socialist health care? Don’t get me started.
In the course of driving to work (if you drive and don’t walk or bike), you do. Should car insurance premiums be $30K a year, in case you kill someone while driving?
Completely different analogy, but this makes the case that driver’s licenses should be much more difficult to come about. Since they cause only half the deaths due to medicine in general (not all from doctor’s), then I would be ok with using half of the average malpractice insurance premium as car insurance personal injury premiums. Or maybe people don’t sue after car accidents because the guy who hit them doesn’t have a six figure salary. Hmm. Or maybe because there are caps. Hmm.
Man, this shit is still going on? I like you guys.
All I’ve seen mentioned are wrong legs taken off, wrong nuts taken off, tools and sandwiches left on the inside. As I said before, I’d be willing to wager that these types of cases constitute less then 5% of all malpractice claims. I have no problems whatsoever taking any person to task over such a monumental fuckup. First we make sure that all future medical care and costs are covered, we put the doctor in the doghouse, and punitive damages be exacted and given to charity. This part of the system really isn’t the problem, IT’S THE OTHER 95% OF THE MALPRACTICE CLAIMS. Yes, I had to cap that because you’re going to come back at me with some stupid “but the wrong leg was cut of”, which I just commented on 2 seconds ago. In reality, most malpractice suits are against doctors that are fully competent, and are the result of circumstances that have gone wrong, or couldn’t have been foreseen. We’re dealing with the human body, hundreds of factors at play, and the reality that doctors have a lot less control over things then we give them credit for.
So to recap, wrong leg, sue. Wrong medicine, sue. Allergic reaction to medicine that was previously unknown, don’t sue.
So you’re basically saying if it’s not simple enough to be understood by the lay public, it doesn’t constitute malpractice that should be suit-worthy? Where do you get these pearls, Worldy? I will only say this one more time-
It’s not about specific cases or what percentage of these cases involve such simplistic, easy to understand or blatantly obvious malpractice. THat’s what lawyers and expetrts and doctors are for. Just because a surgeon’s mishandling of a tool caused a nick in an artery so small as to be unseen, bursting later and killing the patient, doesn’t NOT make it malpractice.
Please tell me you’re playing devil’s advocate just because you’re so deep into this that you can’t back off of this position. What you are saying is akin to saying that basing proof of a crime on a hair found at the scene isn’t valid because DNA isn’t obvious enough and instead relying 100% on witness testimony.
Mishandling or an accidental nicking of an artery. Do you even have a clue as to how difficult even the most routine surgery is? Things go bad, it’s risky stuff. I don’t think people are really aware of this. I don’t feel that the number of lawsuits correctly represents the number of fuckups, I feel there are far less. If you don’t think these malpractice lawsuits are putting a drain on the quality of healthcare in this country, then I don’t know what to say. This is a problem that needs to be remedied.
What’s so difficult to understand? There’s a huge gray area with regards to accidents/negligence, which needs to be addressed. I feel the system is breaking down, and you seem to think everything is peachy, good luck with that, we’ll have to agree that we disagree.