Posted on 07/29/2009 1:25:34 PM PDT by MrLegalReform
President Barack Obama's push for an overhaul of the nation's health care system could be stymied by Senate lawmakers, particularly moderate Democrats, the lobbyist for trial lawyers said...
"Democracy is a great thing except on the Senate floor," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at legalnewsline.com ...
My primary suggestion to improve US health care and dramatically lower the costs would be to disbar every trial lawyer and put a cap on damages.
Two words: Loser pays.
If we could put caps on punitive damages it would do a lot to lower costs. If a doctor screws up, yes all the medical bills should be wiped clean along with any long term care that is needed because of the mistake, but these multimillion dollar judgments do nothing but hurt the hospital and others who have to pay for it.
Scratch that some may pay $300,000 per year in premiums.
Limiting lawsuits should have been accomplished long ago. It it had passed, health care would not be so damned expensive and probably would not be addressed this way. Maybe that was the plan.
In addition to the high malpractice insurance fees are all of the extra “CYA” stuff the doctor needs to perform because of the fear of a tort-related lawsuit....I havent seen it quantified, but I would believe it contributes just as much to the cost of healthcare as the malpractice insurance itself.
LOL, in a sane world that would work. However, I’m sure any number of lawyers would argue about what ‘lose’ means. Myself, I think loser and lawyer are one in the same. The fewer we have the better.
This would save more money on healthcare than all the laws that will be passed in the next ten years.
So obvious.
Based on what we’ve seen of Obama so far, I would say the Malpractice Bar is dreaming if they believe “O”’s promises that he will find some way to preserve their happy hunting grounds.
In the end, government will control health care. You do not sue the government. When he needs them no longer, they will be as expendable as the rest of us.
My Family care doctor was paying $240,000 for his liabilty insurance, before he accepted an Army position and closed his practice. Speaking to him last year, he’s making nore in GOVERNMENT SERVICE, than he did in Private Family Practice, because of the cost of Malpractice insurance.
Good!!! Tort reform is a must
The single biggest root cause of ever increasing costs is the lottery mentality of lawyers and their clients. Are there some legitimate cases, sure but by an large, this is not the case. Malpractice costs are driving obgyn’s out of Pennsylvania.
For my colonoscopy, the anesthesia bill was higher than the procedure. Higher malpractice insurance
The only good that can come of these pointless tests is that they provide good data for population based health studies.
Punitive damages are constitutionally capped. Though it varies on the circumstance, it will typically be a due process violation for punitives in excess of twice the actuals.
People get excited when they see a doctor makes $500,000 per year, but when you subtract taxes and insurance costs it often will come down to under $200,000 and that may include 24 hour shifts as the attending physician, along with long regular days doing rounds, clinic hours, procedures and updating charts.
It would eliminate virtually all of the frivolous lawsuits if we could not only put a cap on punitive damages, but also "pain and suffering" and all the other intangible nonsense. Yes, people who are truly victims of medical malpractice should have all of their medical expenses, lost wages, etc., compensated. But every time we see one of those humongous awards (which often get scaled back quite a bit), the overwhelming bulk of them is for intangible, non-economic "losses."
If a doctor screws up, yes all the medical bills should be wiped clean along with any long term care that is needed because of the mistake, but these multimillion dollar judgments do nothing but hurt the hospital and others who have to pay for it.
And the lawyers (at least in NY -- I don't know about the rest of the country) get about 1/3 of the award.
Realize that many of those tests are ordered as a matter of habit now based on prior malpractice suits - a suit finds for the plaintiff because test X was not performed, so the insurance company now requires all of its insured doctors to perform test X or coverage is invalidated.
How will trial lawyers fare when the insurer/provider is the federal government and they have to file under the Federal Tort Claims Act? Will the dems waive sovereign immunity for their buddies the trial lawyers?
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