More Malpractice

By Douglas Cassel
I'm not a doctor or a lawyer, but as a journalist I've reviewed medical malpractice cases at the local courthouse, and I can tell you that we're not talking about compensating people who have minor injuries or no injuries. Those are weeded out quickly by the courts. We're talking here about surgeons who left stuff inside people, or cut off the wrong limb, or doctors who seriously misdiagnosed an illness or provided the wrong medication or a dangerous dosage. People become permanently disabled. Babies die. Families are devastated. These are the people who are compensated by our court system and therefore are most affected by tort reform, and this is why we shouldn't give up their rights until we implement real safety measures that improve the quality of care and reduce errors.

Kathy Miller

My previous post identified the exaggerated impact of medical malpractice upon health care in America. One of the myriad deficiencies of Obamacare is it's failure to even address, much less solve, this vital concern. Until the haunting spectra of malpractice is lifted from physicians, the continued over treatment and over utilization of testing will not change.

However, I also agree with the statement by Kathy Mitchell, there are some incompetent, greedy, drug impaired, arrogant, stupid and lazy doctors. Even many good doctors have bad days or occasional lapses. Patients are injured and killed, and these issues cannot be dismissed. Doctors need to do better. Medical malpractice reform needs to go hand in hand with medical quality assurance reform.

What would an improved malpractice system include? The adversarial tort based system will have to be replaced with some sort of no-fault system. The lawyers must be removed from the process, replaced by medically trained, unbiased panels that would make awards based upon the degree of patient injury. Such systems are in place and have had some success in New Zealand and Scandinavia. Of course, the trial lawyer lobby, and their allies, both the White house and Congress, will fight this to the death. Lawyers will support the "rights" of the patients, and their own financial interests, despite the fact that only 1 in 15 patients with medical errors get any compensation at all in the present system.

Just to show I am not a typical lawyer bashing doctor, I feel addressing doctor incompetence may even be more problematic Presently, there is no effective method to identify, discipline, retrain or terminate even the most impaired, incompetent or criminal physicians. State medical boards and hospital staffs are impotent. The required complexity and intrusiveness of any system comprehensive enough to monitor the behavior of every care provider nationwide would be enormously expensive and meet intense resistance from the medical community. The bureaucracy involved would rival that created by Obamacare. (perhaps the bureau could be staffed by all of the newly retired physicians such a program would generate). Malpractice reform is vital for any realistic attempt to fix what is ailing the US healthcare system. The award limits which have been enacted do help doctors, but don't change utilization behavior. The almost insurmountable obstacles to making needed reforms may doom of any serious attempt to improve our medical care system.http://ezinearticles.com/?More-Malpractice&id=5351324