Its not that the problem of defensive medicine doesn’t exist, its that current tort reform proposals do nothing to stop it.
Lets say you are a doctor and you can either prescribe this expensive test to check for the presence of a rare condition or face the possibility of a lawsuit that will cost you a decagozillion dollars if this rare condition exists in your patient. What do you do?
Lets say you are a doctor in a state with tort reform and you can either prescribe this expensive test to check for the presence of a rare condition or face a possbility of a lawsuit that will cost you potentially millions (because pain and suffering is capped at $250,000) but not decagozillions of dollars if this rare condition exists in your patient. What do you do?
I think most people would do the exact same thing under both regimes (capped pain and suffering is one of the the most commonly proposed form of tort reform). All it does is reduce medical malpractice insurance company payouts who pass some tiny percentage of the savings on to the doctor who then passes an even tinier percentage of the savings on to the consumer.
If you really want to reduce these sort of tests, then you need liability safe harbors that say that you can’t get sued if you followed best practices, which will often dictate that you don’t order these expensive tests. A few more people will die every year as a result but it will free up medical resources that will save many more lives than you lose (cold comfort if you are the one dying of that rare condition that an expensive test could have caught early enough to treat). Frankly you would probably save a lot more money with good end of life counseling.
The main reason why doctors cannot run pharmacies is because of this sort of conflict of interest. Similarly, doctors cannot refer to a testing facility in which they have an ownership interest. They can provide testing on the premises for a fee but they cannot refer out to a facility they own.
Its just not a deep enough market to provide the competitive pressures of a free market. It provides SOME competitive pressure but not the classic free market version that leave the insurance company with just enough profit to make it worth investing. The problem is that the barriers to entry are very high and until fairly recently were frequently closely held.
Procrustus, do you have any idea how those stats compare to medical malpractice suits in the US? Is either the rate of success or the amount of damages higher in the US?
Also, do you have any idea what the pain and suffering awards are like, in states that don’t have caps?
I’m sure someone has studied this, but I don’t have the figures. The med mal attorneys who make a living at it tell me they have to accept less than 1% of the cases that are referred to then. Most of the cases they take settle (because of pretty firm evidence of malpractice), and the ones that go to trial (defense refuses to settle) are almost always defense verdicts.
Again, I’m sure it’s been studied. From my own experience, it is highly variable and unpredictable. Some people have been terribly injured and a large multi-million pain and suffering award would make sense. On the other hand, I’ve also seen $50,000 in a case of a quadriplegic.
A rule, no. Hypocrisy is a moral criticism. It requires the person to perform an action that they have previously said is immoral. While whether something is a moral argument is complicated, one way to know is if you are arguing that people “should not be allowed” to do something.
If Bricker were to argue that people should not be allowed to play Monopoly how they wanted (with Free Parking bonus), it would be hypocritical for him to do it himself. But saying he would prefer not to play that way invokes no hypocrisy at all.
But that doesn’t apply to Abbot, who is saying that people should not be allowed to get the type of money that he is getting. That’s a moral argument. Yes, it’s being used to make policy, but it’s still a moral argument.
Warren Buffet is hard for me to decide on. I can see arguments both ways on it being a moral argument. I fall down on the side of thinking that he is not advocating for voluntary tax contributions, so he’s under no obligation to give them, but I can see the other side. Still, I can also see how him giving more money than required wouldn’t help, since the whole point of increasing taxes on the rich is to either get more services or to reduce taxes on the not-rish, neither of which would happen.
Oh and as for the topic of this thread: It honestly just seems like trying to pick something that is related to the same field, to create the semblance of compromise. Get the Republican base to repeat this enough and they’ll believe it, and then maybe we can do both at the same time. I don’t like the caps, but single-payer might be worth it.
No - the charge of hypocrisy is not necessarily a moral criticism. It is often a form of the tu quoque fallacy in that the validity of an argument or position is based on the actions of the person advancing the argument or position.
Abbot is pushing for a law. The law is amoral. Abbot may or may not be a hypocrite but that is independent of the position he is advancing. I grant that having unsoiled champions may be more effective in efforts of persuasion.
I don’t practise in this area, but that doesn’t sound much different from the Canadian experience.
It’s that disparity that the cap in Canada is meant to avoid. The SCC reasoned that it’s really not possible to distinguish between differs people’s loss of enjoyment of life. The principle of equality of human dignity suggests that for non-pecuniary, subjective, losses like that, each person’s enjoyment of life should be considered the same, not subject to the vagaries of argument in court and sympathetic juries. bA full quadriplegic would likely rank at the top of the range.
That’s separate entirely from pecuniary losses, of course. Those are objective and provable, and can vary from person to person. They’re not subject to any cap, provided the plaintiff can prove them n
I absolutely agree. His argument is that it’s a better social scheme when ALL wealthy people pay more taxes; he doesn’t argue that it’s some per se moral good any time any person pays more. You may agree or disagree with his tax policy proposals but his failure to personally, voluntarily pay extra is not in the least hypocritical or inconsistent.
It’s sort of the opposite of tort “reform.” A law limiting torts says one can’t sue. A law limiting sovereign immunity means one can sue. The defaults in each situation are the opposite of each other.
Not entirely but its about as effective as reducing medical costs as an AWB would be at reducing gun deaths or a vaginal probe would be at reducing abortions.
