The State of Florida is trying to put a cap on malpractice suits to the tune of $250,000.00. Apparently doctors are moving to other states because their malpractice insurance is too high and they don’t want to pay the fees.
Do you think $250,000.00 is reasonable? I don’t . Suppose the life of your child was taken. Is that enough compensation?
Suppose the doctor sutured you back up only to find out they left a pair of clamps inside of you and have to reopen you to get them out.
Doctors are making money out the wazoo. I think they should pay the insurance fees and lump it. It comes with the profession.
I’m not convinced doctors are “making money out the wazoo” if many are leaving the practice because premiums are too high. This is a problem. No one gets any healthier from a lawsuit. If you believe going to the doctor is too risky, then you are free to cut out the middlemen and practice your own medicine on yourself. Then, you don’t have to worry about some irresponsible doctor messing up on you! If you want it done right, do it yourself.
The $250,000 cap is only on pain and suffering damages. There is no cap on rewards for actual damages.
Doctors are making money out the wazoo? What do you base that claim on? Certainly some doctors are making a lot of money. Others are struggling to stay in business. The high cost of malpractice insurance is ruining some doctors who practice in high risk fields. It isn’t that they don’t want to pay for malpractice, it is that they really can’t afford it.
My pediatrician charges $150 just to walk in the door. The visit is usually 5-10 minutes long. I call that making money out the wazoo. That is $25 a minute.
God forbid any tests that are run.
You see doctors driving fancy cars and sporting bling bling.
My ex brother in law is a doctor and lives in a million dollar house. I call that making money out the wazoo!
Do you really expect an answer to this question? Every parent I know, including myself, would say it’s impossible to compensate for the loss of a child. No matter how much money you get, $250,000 or $4 gazillion, it isn’t going to make the pain any less.
I don’t know what the hell bling bling is or how you sport it.
You are are talkign about two doctors. What kind of doctor is your ex brother in law? Some kinds of doctors are making a lot of money. Others aren’t. I know a doctor who owes tons of money and lives in an apartment. What does that prove?
Your child’s doctor doesn’t get to keep the $125 he charges you. He has to pay his staff, rent for his office space, equipment (believe me, that isn’t cheap!), taxes, malpractice insurance, etc.
I work for an insurance company and work with the deductibles from our former medical sector of the company. We’ve gotten out of Healthcare insurance because we couldn’t raise the rates high enough to cover all of the claims that are being filed against doctors and hospitals. We’re not the only ones getting out (or trying to get out) of the healthcare insurance business (aka Malpractice). I’ve talked with former insureds, Hospitals and independent Doctors, who have had a very hard time trying to find coverage since we’ve left.
Healthcare in this country needs reform from the ground up and so in the interim, you get stop-gap measures like these being proposed. If this proposal doesn’t go through, the possibility of Florida losing qualified Doctors to states with lower premiums is pretty good. Which in turn, leaves the not-as-good Doctors in the state. What happens next is obviously following a theoretical line that would probably mean more law suits, higher premiums, less doctors, worse healthcare, Auntie Em Auntie Em…
So after all of that being said. I started just thinking about “what does ‘pain and suffering’ mean?”. I’m sure it’s different for everyone, a loss of a child, the wrong limb amputated, a prescription for Phen-Fen, a patient being released who commits suicide, et al. That doesn’t mean that it should be a cash cow though. I have to agree with putting a cap on it of some sort. Is $250K enough or too much? Should it be based more on someone’s earning potential than on the incident involved (assuming that the person is of majority age)? I’m not sure.
Out of curiosity, is there some ammount of money that suddenly makes losing your child ok? Malpractice shouldn’t be about getting a money based on how close you were to someone.
If you loose the primary provider, sure money to make up for that. Money for the cost you paid getting the medical services, sure. But money becuase “It was my baby”? I don’t see why. When someone close dies by a lightning strike, or even murder, do you expect money out of the “deal”? I don’t know anyone that does. Why should you becuase some doctor (who was trying to actually HELP) screwed up?
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*Originally posted by Isabelle *
**I guess my initial thought when writing it was that woulnd’t even be enough to bury my child in the manner that I would want.
You couldn’t bury a child with 250K! What did you have in mind- launching the departed into deep space?
Ridiculous. If your kids doctor is too expensive, don’t take the kid to the doctor.
Good try at standing up for the attorneys who rape and pillage the medical care system. Here are a few facts:[ul][li]Malpractice suits don’t punish incompetent physicians. The awards and settlements are paid by insurance companies. The doctor’s premium doesn’t even go up after a suit. Insurance companies ultimately get their money from us. We are punishing ourselves with malpractice suits.[]The state regulates who can practice medicine. It’s their job to weed out incompetents. Hospitals regulate which doctors get privileges to use their hospitals. They also weed out incompetents.[]Over half of malpractice money goes to lawyers and legal costs. That’s why rich, greedy lawyers don’t want reform. [/ul]What I don’t understand is why so many liberals support these vultures. Normally liberals oppose rich businesses that rip off the rest of us. I’m not just talking about minty green, who is a [gasp!] lawyer :eek:, but about non-lawyer liberals as well, like Consumers Union and the New York Times.[/li] Isabelle, the cause-and-effect are the opposite of what you think. Doctors’ bills are so high partly because their malpractice costs are so high. Moderate malpractice reform like the one we’re discussing will help keep doctors’ charges from rising even more.
Also, children die for many reasons: accidents, illnesses, suicide, etc. Very few deaths are caused by malpractice. If it’s important for you to have a certain sum of money in case of your child’s death, perhaps you should buy life insurance in that amount. That way you will be sure to get money regardless of the cause of death. Life insurance on a child isn’t that expensive.
stpauler – FYI I recently retired from your company’s reinsurance subsidiary.
Do you have insurance? If you do, I can guarantee that your pediatrician is making nowhere near the $150 he bills. For the average doctor’s visit, Medicare (which, in turn, drives most reimbursement amounts) pays around $50, no matter how much the doctor bills. Medicaid pays even less. If you don’t have insurance, you’re subsidizing those patients who do.
A medical office is expensive to equip and maintain. There are salaries to pay, equipment to buy, supplies to maintain. None of these are cheap. Nurses and office staff expect a living wage. Equipment can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars and must be replaced as it becomes obsolete or wears out. Supplies cost money, as well. If I have to go to the doctor for, say, stitches, I expect them to keep the needle, suture material, and anesthetic on hand. It’s pointless otherwise.
Lab and x-ray reimbursement is even lower than that. A chest x-ray that the radiologist bills at $50 might bring in $15-20, and I’m being generous. (The last information I have is that Medicare reimburses these at $10 and change. Private carriers pay more.)
FTR, I have yet to see any physician drive a “fancy car”. The physician’s parking lot at my neurologist’s office usually does not have expensive cars. The most expensive I’ve seen is a late-model land-yacht SUV, and it was a Ford.
All of that having been said, however, I can add this to the discussion. My older son died at 39 days old due to medical malpractice. No amount of money will bring him back. It won’t even make me feel better; any amount I could get would feel like blood money. I honestly don’t understand why people get so indignant at the idea of a cap for “pain and suffering”.
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*Originally posted by december * Here are a few facts:[list][li]Malpractice suits don’t punish incompetent physicians. The awards and settlements are paid by insurance companies. The doctor’s premium doesn’t even go up after a suit. Insurance companies ultimately get their money from us. We are punishing ourselves with malpractice suits[/li][/QUOTE]
Huh? Where did you get this “fact” from? I have seen malpractice insurance premiums go up on doctors who have suits even if they win the suits. It costs the insurance companies a lot of money to defend malpractice lawsuits even if in the end the doctor is found to have done nothing wrong.
As other folks have pointed out, it’s easy to think of situations where $250k is far too low.
The example I gave in another thread is a 25 year-old accountant who is paralyzed from the waist down due to doctor negligence and who is unable to walk or have sex for the rest of his life.
It seems to me that $250k is a pittance for someone who is confined to a wheelchair for 40-50 years.
Gasp! A retired insurance company executive supports tort limits; what a surprise. Give it a rest, december, we all know you would do anything to fatten the purse of the rapacious insurance industry, even at the expense of those who have suffered grievously at the hands of your clients. I’m sure you wouldn’t support a law limiting insurance premiums, but then that’s not your ox being gored. Why the mock surprise when the community your industry victimizes fights back with lawyers? Who would you have us use, the gardener? The only way to get the attention of the insurance companies is to take away their money, and lawyers have proven to be the most efficient way of doing that. Get used to it.
This sounds like one of those daytime commercials for people that are laid up from car accidents. “Tell the insurance companies you mean BUSINESS, hire Woods and Thompson today!”.
Unfortunately this is a society that requires insurance due to the fact that people slap a price tag on everything that happens to them. I saw a claim come through where a guy sat on his testicle while attempting to sit on the toilet seat. Well, he crushed it and decided to sue the place. He wins. Who’s the victim there? Apparently the hospital was responsible for whoever uses their restrooms and how they conduct themselves everywhere. That makes sense. Insurance is around to also help defray costs so the hospitals don’t have to absorb all of these idiotic law suits.
Ok, so let’s take away the money from the insurance company. They crumble, the doctors are no longer insured and so they get sued directly. They now have to fork out $250K in just legal expenses to defend themselves for something they may or may not have done.
The healthcare system is just a cockroach away from tipping over all of the dominoes. This law is a good roach spray.