National Journal Magazine: “Our medical-malpractice lawsuit system is too capricious and too clogged with costs and delays to do justice for malpractice victims or for wrongly sued doctors. It also does little to deter malpractice. Worse, unless fundamentally reformed, malpractice law could greatly weaken efforts to control health care costs. The main reason, in the view of many experts, is that doctors’ fear of unwarranted malpractice liability helps spur many billions of dollars in unnecessary “defensive medicine” costs.”
Medical Malpractice System Wasting Billions, Doing Injustice
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Plaintiffs get maybe 40% of the financial output from any given case. docs do not get a jury of peers to decide if the roux en y choleducojejunostoy was performed to the accepted standards of care. Change the forum to arbitration:
– Arbitration improvements could move things quicker, provide a peer group, and get the most money to the injured party.
– That plaintiff firms are genuine well meaning advocates, but will never argue for a solution to med mal at their own expense. I understand that, and it’s the 800lb gorilla.
– That a cap for non economics is imperfect , but some measuring stick is needed. Weighing pain is similar to weighing smoke.
– In 25years I have only paid aggregate limits on 3 docs, all 3 were plastics. All injuries that fell into the smoke category, no measuring stick to weigh the P&S.
– Meritorious claims should be settled at a fair cost, preferably structured.
– Good ideas are never immune from compromise, so we end up shuffling the same deck of cards and fail to solve the issues. Does any of the above sound reasonable to you?
Arbitration allows Docs to be judged by their peers, removes the Hollywood hystrionics from the courtroom, and the compensation goes to the injured. Plaintiff attys can still obtain a handsome hourly fee, maybe even double what the successful defense firms charge. They seem to do well. This is a great idea on many levels but people are not interested in good ideas, they only camoflage their arguments because it is about money in their own pockets and not the injured party. regards Jim VP claims med mal