Tag Archives: Trial Lawyer

News

How Texas cut costs by reforming medical malpractice suits

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Here’s some great news from the conservative state of Texas. (H/T Caffeinated Thoughts)

Excerpt:

The Texas Legislature in 2003 adopted sweeping changes to its civil justice system that significantly altered when, where and how many lawsuits could be filed. In the medical malpractice area, those reforms were basically threefold.

[…]First, to sustain a lawsuit against the medical care provider, an expert report was required within 120 days of filing the suit stating that the doctor being sued committed a medical error that caused injuries.

[…]Second, noneconomic damages were capped to control arbitrary awards on pain and suffering or loss of consortium.

[…]The third significant tort reform was to prohibit the introduction into evidence of phantom damages.

[…]These common-sense reforms have led to a massive increase in the accessibility of health care in Texas, huge growth in the capital infrastructure of hospitals and clinics, hundreds of millions of dollars more each year in charity care and Texas’ adding more than 16,000 new doctors in just six years.

And in reducing the actual number of suits to those in which claims are meritorious — a recent Harvard study concluded that up to 85% of all lawsuits brought against medical providers were frivolous — we have created a more equitable system of justice.

I wish I lived in Texas – that’s a real red state, except for stupid Austin. By the way, I got this story out of the round-up at Caffeinated Thoughts. There are couple of great articles in there, like one on the North Korean gulags. It’s worth a look. Shane always links to very interesting articles.

News

Why the Democrats won’t reform medical malpractice laws

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In the USA, doctors are sued all the time by patients for “medical malpractice”. Sometimes the lawsuits have merit and sometimes they don’t. But because the payoffs are so high, plaintiffs have every reason to sue. Doctors must carry expensive insurance against frivolous lawsuits, and they also perform many unnecessary tests and procedures to reduce their exposure to potential lawsuits. This raises the cost of health care.

Consider this Wall Street Journal article.

Excerpt:

Eliminating defensive medicine could save upwards of $200 billion in health-care costs annually, according to estimates by the American Medical Association and others. The cure is a reliable medical malpractice system that patients, doctors and the general public can trust.

But this is the one reform Washington will not seriously consider. That’s because the trial lawyers, among the largest contributors to the Democratic Party, thrive on the unreliable justice system we have now.

Consider how this affects obstetricians:

Former [Democrat] Sen. John Edwards, for example, made a fortune bringing 16 cases against hospitals for babies born with cerebral palsy. Each of those tragic cases was worth millions in settlement. But according to a 2006 study at the National Institutes of Health, in nine out of 10 cases of cerebral palsy nothing done by a doctor could have caused the condition.

Unreliable justice is like pouring acid over the culture of health care. One in 10 obstetricians have stopped delivering babies, unable to pay malpractice premiums on the order of $1,000 per baby, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Some hospitals, including Methodist Hospital and Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia, have stopped delivering babies altogether; and the number of unnecessary caesarian sections have increased to the detriment of the health of mothers, according to the ACOG.

Read the whole thing.

Unfortunately for us, some trial lawyers pay a lot of money to Democrats to make sure that their activities will not be curtailed by legislation. And the Democrats dance to their tune. I cannot for the life of me figure out why doctors continue to provide medical care to these medical malpractice lawyers.

News

Trial lawyer lobby running a 6.2M deficit as economy tanks

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Story from the Washington Times. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The trial lawyers lobby has been awash in debt and bleeding members – just as it embarks on a national campaign to block any clampdown on medical malpractice lawsuits as part of President Obama’s health care overhaul.

The American Association for Justice, the most prominent group representing plaintiffs’ attorneys, has seen a shake-up in its executive suite and has struggled to deal with what appears to be a mounting budget shortfall. To help it fight congressional efforts to make it harder for patients to sue doctors and lawyers, it recently sent out an extra solicitation to its members, asking them to fork over money for a lobbying campaign.

The most striking evidence of its financial woes is a swift decline in income, which resulted in a more than $6.2 million deficit in its operating budget for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2008, the most recent year for which data are available.

The biggest hit to its books was in membership dues, which dropped from $28.6 million in 2005 to $19.2 million in 2008, according to the annual AAJ financial report for that fiscal year filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

Trial lawyers raise health care expenses for patients and doctors.

Consider this article from the Weekly Standard.  (H/T The Heritage Foundation)

Excerpt:

There are credible estimates that serious tort reform could save the country between $100 and $200 billion annually in wasteful spending, as doctors practice defensive medicine to preempt lawsuits. … Now Obama says he’s going to study the issue. “I am directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on this initiative today,” he said.

That would be Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, whose resume includes eight years as director of the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association.

So Obama has chosen a former industry lobbyist to run tort reform.

Why are people cynical about health care reform?

According to Howard Dean, the trial lawyer lobby prevented the Democrats from including tort reform in the health care bill. They helped to elect Obama, and so Obama could not oppose them in his health care bill. The Democrats are a party dominated by special interest groups who contribute nothing to the economy.

Don’t forget that Obama picked a union lobbyist to be in charge of creating manufacturing jobs!

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