More Info on Defending My Career
Monday, July 23, 2007
Hi folks. I am working on my Okie Vegas write up, and will hopefully have the first installment up later today. But in the meanwhile, I wanted to post some information that I recently recieved. A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the medical malpractice insurance "crisis", and explained how it was not the lawyers or the lawsuits that cause the insurance rates to increase. There was some great debate in the comments, and I thought I'd offer some more information to explain why the focus should be on reforming the insurance companies and not on legislation limiting the injured patient's right to sue.
"Over 80% of doctors have never paid a cent in malpractice payouts, while a mere 5% of doctor's account for over 50% of all payouts. Clearly, the Office of Professional Medical Conduct must do a better job of identifying and disciplining or removing errant doctors."
That information was admittedly provided in a newsletter by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, so the source must be considered. However, I feel that way about ALL information, generally speaking, and this topic particularly seems to be one that can be twisted by statistics. Still, I cannot imagine that NYSTLA could realistically put out these numbers if there wasn't some actual support for them. So, even when you discount the source, the idea remains the same. If most of the med mal lawsuits are against the same doctors, then the insurance companies should be targeting those doctors for rate increases ONLY, or refusing to cover them, AND the medical boards need to stop these doctors from practicing. Likewise, it makes NO SENSE to allow these doctors to continue to treat patients while LIMITING a patient's ability to recover if that doctor commits medical malpractice.
I don't mean to renew the debate, but last time I lacked these numbers. Thanks for reading. More poker later.
Until next time, make mine poker!
posted by Jordan @ 12:12 PM,
2 Comments:
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At 2:50 PM,
KajaPoker said...
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Well that makes sense. Because the 80/20 rule applies to almost everything in life. It's nobody's fault but the public's. If we did not live in a money-grabbing litigious society, we wouldn't even have this debate (and I am not saying it's the lawyers' fault here - they are just the people with the tools to do the suing). Go to some remote island or village that doesn't have this mindset and you will find that the people who screw up (medicine man, brick layer, plumber, whatever) will be out looking for a new profession. But we so-called "modern" people love to try to squeeze as much money as we can out of someone else, whether it be for the right or wrong reasons. And the best part is that even lawyers gets sued for malpractice, making their insurance costs rise and raising their own rates in return.
Now if you want to open a real can of worms (and wupp-ass), why don't we talk about the Archidioses (or however it's spelled) of Los Angeles paying out over $600M to 500+ molested people in a class action suit. About half that amount is coming from insurance companies, because the church apparently got some kind of "child-molester" insurance. Now that's really something, isn't it? -
At 4:15 PM,
Jordan said...
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Child molestor insurance? That actually reminds me of another case I had, where we were suing some institutions for allowing our client to be molested repeatedly in the school/after-school program even after the mother told them about the molestations. Ironically, during one of the court appearances, an old nemesis from my law school days was working for the defendants (we had competed against each other in law school competitions, where I summarily whooped her ass). We were catching up and I mentioned how I had switched from defense to plaintiff's work. Her reply, "Oh, you went over to the dark side?" I bit my tongue, but I was thinking, "You fucking bitch! I represent a MOLESTED CHILD and I'm the dark side?!" That's the same problem we have with med mal cases. People just think that if you bring a lawsuit you are a bad guy or you are out for money, but it really isn't like that.
