Is it possible at all that Senator Edwards didn’t think that the malpractice bill protected the citizen enough? Is it truly possible that he was looking out “for the little guy”? Or is he just by default a scum-sucking, ambulance-chasing, money-pocketing fuckwit out to make a dollar at the expense of those poor poor overprotected medical doctors?
I truly think since the text of the exact bill isn’t available to us(didn’t see it in the cites), that we can give him the benefit of the doubt.
And who is more important? the population at-large who stands to be injured by a doctor and have a limit put on the damage, or the medical elite who are sometimes careless? It would suck to have your left leg amputated instead of your ruptured appendix and THEN be told that you could only be awarded $20,000 for your pain and suffering and medical bills.
Your density or obtuseness is overwhelming, I suppose I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt of being obtuse since you claim to be in the medical profession.
I’ll just add that my girlfriend and a few of her classmates were very interested in OB/GYN, but ended up ruling it out because they’ll most likely get the shit sued out of them.
Unless something is changed, there might not be many people delivering babies in the next 20 years.
Actually, I think I prefer the option, mentioned earlier in the thread (by mhendo?), of allowing voters to cast a negative vote. If this were implemented, when you’re in the voting booth you’d be able either to cast a vote for a candidate (giving them +1 in their voting totals) or cast a vote against a candidate (giving them -1 in their voting totals). Making this even more fun would be a threshold of aggregate votes that the winning candidate would need to receive in order to have a valid plurality.
In the absence of us moving to an approval voting system (or STV or preference voting; I’m not picky), I think I’d like to see something like this.
I’d also like to see a major party presidential or vice-presidential candidate who isn’t a wealthy white male. …Sorry, sorry, that kind of idealist fantasy won’t do anyone any good.
And I’d much rather find a doctor who had a less cynical view of how the world works delivering my baby, and still decided that they’d be dedicated to the job anyways. Guess what Worldy? There aren’t whole lot of rewarding careers, both monetarily and personally, that don’t have both a requirement for malpractice or other insurance as well as the risk of getting sued.
Doctors(my mother is a doctor), Lawyers(my boss is a lawyer), Inventors, Financiers, Burger chain owners, Bike Couriers, Stenographers, Notaries Public(of which I am one). THOUSANDS of other professions have the same liabilities as well as the same risks.
I’m a cynical fucker, too, but even I would risk my fucking neck for a career I thought rewarding. THe bare fact that your GF and her friends refuse to pursue a specific specialty due to the risk is telling about how dedicated they would be to it.
I don’t understand why people feel that just because someone was a plaintiffs’ attorney that means that don’t have their client’s best interests at heart. Many lawyers want to help people and for some that means public interest law and for others that means helping the little guy take on a big corporations.
I also don’t understand why some suggest that the health care industry is the victim in these situations. A 1990 Harvard study stated that over 80,000 people die each year due to doctors’ negligence. Should those victims, as well as those who are irreparably injured, be left without a recourse?
Gawd, sincerely, if you don’t look it up, don’t comment. ACOG
Many of us do go into the profession looking to help humanity. I am at a school specifically chartered to help bring medicine to underserved rural areas. Guess how much OB premiums are. Around $100K a year. Guess how much rural doctors make. It’s not like on tv, or even doctors who work in cities. The vast majority of doctors probably qualify for the high end of middle class, low end of upper class. If I wanted to make millions, I would try to go into law. It’s obviously easier. I do need a way to pay off my 150K in student loans, as for some reason the lotteries pay for people to go to undergrad, but after that, they are on their own.
Does liability reform leave no recourse? Also, without doctors, how many people would die. What is the life expectancy of places in America with fewer amounts of doctors per capita. Medicine does good. When they do bad, punish them. Not punish them out of existance. Look at West Virginia. They are in a real crisis now because many high risk specialties are moving out. Heaven forbid anyone need brain surgery or emergency caesareans. How many trauma centers have been sued out of existance for trying to save lives. They’re not in it for the money. We aren’t talking about doctors who remove legs instead of appendices. Those cases deserve recompense. We are talking about unproven science in 1985 that has been disproven since then. Why can’t the doctors sue back?
Other professions don’t have people dying on them on a regular basis. Other professions don’t have similar ungodly lawsuits, except in rare cases of McDonald’s coffee and GM’s burning Monte Carlo’s. Even those got reduced by judges. If a person can’t afford premiums, they can’t be a doctor. Not many doctors are so independently wealthy that they can work in the red each year.
As an aside, I hope when I am delivering a baby, I don’t have someone with such a cynical view of doctors as my patient, because I could just see the law offices phones ringing as soon as one of the baby’s ears is higher than the other
Bzzzt, try again. You seem to be hysterical over some misconception that Senator Edwards is some kind of quack ambulance chaser who sues based solely on bad science. Even that extraordinarily biased article admits that some claims of negligence in re cp cases have scientific merit. And not every case Senator Edwards handled was medical malpractice, either, but other instances of neglignce, like the one minty green linked to about the girl whose intestines were sucked out of her body by a too-strong pool pump system.
I understand your frustration, I just don’t think you’re pointing it in the right direction in this case.
Ahem. I’m going to sneak into this snakepit and tell you why I like Edwards as the VP choice.
I’m not convinced he’ll deliver the South to Kerry. As a matter of fact, I don’t think this was a driving factor in the decision even though it seems to be the “conventional wisdom”.
As far as the South is concerned, what this does do is force the Republicans to spend more money in the South to ensure their votes. This is money that would have otherwise been spent in swing states.
I like Edwards because he has relatively humble roots where Kerry does not. Edwards is smart, articulate, and engaging. He is a natural salesman. Kerry is not. Kerry has the experience and wisdom, but does not have the natural ability to light a fire in the audience. Edwards is like a Baptist preacher. He can easily get you up and yelling “amen”. Kerry needs that. Edwards will focus on “selling” Kerry to the country.
I think the Kerry / Edwards ticket is perfectly complementary. In a way that a Kerry / Gephardt ticket would not be (two peas in a pod).
I am vehemently opposed to Bush, and I think Edwards will help Kerry win the election.
That is why I’m pleased with the VP choice that Kerry has made.
I looked it over and I agree it’s a problem, but what does this have to do with the bill that Senator Edwards stepped on? I’m looking for a name or the text of that bill.
Your deliberate obtuseness really shows again. If you honestly think that my opinion of the health profession is cynical(Dear god, accountability!), and that by supporting suits against doctors for misdeeds or malpractice means that I would attempt to sue a doctor because of something so silly, then I hope my chart and your license don’t cross paths.
The subject is Senator Edwards and a 20 year old case which had science in its favor 20 years ago. If you feel that the science of the time was incorrect for its time in history, sue the experts, not the lawyer who tried the case. In fact, why don’t we go through every suit in the history of law and sue for damages if the basis for the decision was rendered moot by new technogloy/theories/proof.
The subject is not childish insults and hyperbole about whether or not I would attempt to sue a doctor for something silly like you suggest.
Also, I never said anything about him being an ambulance chaser. I am just indicating that I don’t want to vote for him because he is against malpractice reform. I never said he wasn’t a good lawyer. Perhaps someone is reading a bit much into my statements. Perhaps it is Gawd. I am not sure whose comments he was reading, but I certainly never said anything about the legitimacy of his lawsuits. I simply said that I think the doctors in that case should be allowed to sue back, since science now shows they were likely not at fault. And why not allow people who time has proven right to re-sue? We already allow baseless lawsuits of almost every other kind. People get to sue over ownership of expensive paintings stolen by the nazis.
I said recompense is due for certain things. 7.5 Million isn’t compensation. It is ridiculous. As a note, if law were truly interested in fixing medicine, why weren’t as many dead babies cases taken. Is that because the average payout for a dead baby, as cited in the Times piece, is only $500K? Why go for small change when we can get huge settlements for families that actually have a child to love.
I have no clue what bill you are talking about. I tried to imply that when he becomes VP, if a tiebreaker in the senate over malpractice comes to him, he likely will not vote for it. I don’t have any references to bills he has or hasn’t voted for during his term.
BTW, I agree with Shayna that while your anger/frustration is noted, real and understandable, that Edwards and a former suit aren’t the proper targets of your venting. I looked the PDF over as well, and I still don’t see any specific suggestions for legislation, proof that Edwards is the problem with getting said legislation passed.
And I don’t think we’re disputing any facts…you’re blaming Edwards for the state of malpractice insurance as it is today, and it’s misdirected. All I have said is that Edwards was doing his job, and doing it well based upon the science of the time and you can’t knock the guy for that. To do so is short-sighted to a HUGE degree.
So you admit it’s the worst kind of hyperbole you’re relying on. Outright disgust at the man because he tried a few CP cases, not facts or cites? Thin, terribly thin.
There was, to my knowledge, a bill in his home state that he stepped on regarding malpractice or recompense. Unfortunately I don’t have the details so I din’t know whether or not your misplaced anger is properly placed. In fact, as I sadi before, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
The problem with caps is that it hurts the people who need the money the most. Someone who is only awarded $25,000 isn’t affected. But the poor, dismembered child who now needs medical care for the rest of her life isn’t going to be able to get the amount needed. Also not to be forgotten is that advocates of tort reform also want to protect the global corporations from lawsuits - even if they are clearly at fault.
My Uncle who worked for a food processing plant for over 25 years fell off of a broken catwalk above a chopping/drying machine last year. He lost an arm, broke many ribs, dislocated his shoulder and had cranial injuries which can no longer be looked into due to the Governator’s cap on worker’s compensation laws in California of $100K.
THe man is currently not working, and cannot be trained to do anything else. How the fuck else is he supposed to get continuing treatment for an horriffic accident on the job which might have earned him some brain damage? He can’t get the MRIs to verify or rule the damage out.
This obviously isn’t a malpractice issue, but it is an issue that tort reform/Worker’s compensation caps have created. That’s why I can’t support caps.
I was under the impression that most of the legislation currently being considered proposed caps only for punitive damages, and not for actual, monetary damages (including necessary medical costs) that arise from the negligence. I might be wrong about this, though, as i haven’t kept up with the latest legislative developments.
I think that there’s a lot to this. The article linked by minty earlier talks about all the frivolous lawsuits that occur between corporations, and points out that the “tort reform” politicians tend to focus less on this and more on reducing the opportunity for individuals to sue corporations.
While this may just be throwing gasoline on the fire, I am repeatedly impressed by the ability of people who have never confronted the problem, never studied the law or the science and sure as hell have never tried a law suit to know every God damned thing there is to know about Senator Edward’s legal career and are sure that all his success in medical malpractice cases and products liability cases and every other kind of civil action he ever saw is based solely on sharp practice and selling a cause like snake oil. This of course is precisely the sort of demagoguery that we are going to see as this presidential campaign goes forward. The specific issues have been repeatedly been fought out before on debates and rants about tort reform (all too often a code word for cutting off meaningful access to the courts), the reasons for high medical professional insurance (which our late friend December conceded had a lot more to do with the bond market than with unreasonable plaintiff’s verdicts), whether a larcenous soul and a disregard for truth was a prerequisite for success in the practice of law, and God knows what other social ill laid at the feet of a system of civil justice that has been building since the Plantagenets were the kings of England. It is time to get use to the idea that Senator Edwards was a highly successful trial lawyer. You do not climb to the heights of that narrow specialty without being very smart, extraordinarily hard working and exceptionally scrupulous. Not, I might add, characteristics necessary to own a piece of a professional baseball team. Please remember that, for instance, such revered Republicans as Abraham Lincoln, John Dewey and Ruddy Julliani based their rise to power on a career before the bar. Surely our friends can think of something more substantive to pin on Senator Edwards than the label of trial lawyer; an accusation that he has had his teeth capped, perhaps?
All that provides a nearly inexhaustible source of fodder for future threads in this and other forums. In the meantime can we get back to the base question of a person who wants to see George Bush out of office and is inclined to vote for Senator Kerry deciding to withhold his vote because he does not find Senator Edwards entirely to his liking?
Some states have pushed through measures that do more than limit punitive damages. For example, in Colorado they passed a law limiting the total damages in a suit against the state to $150,000 per person and $400,000 per incident. In State v. DeFoor, a state worker dislodged a boulder that rolled down the mountain and hit a tour bus. 9 people died and 25 were injured. The court disallowed any constitutional challenges to the law - meaning that the the victims were entitled to $11,000 each in total damages.
