Study: Four Out of 10 Medical Malpractice Cases are Groundless
National News • May 11, 2006
About 40 percent of the medical malpractice cases filed in the United States are groundless, according to a Harvard analysis of the hotly debated issue that pits trial lawyers against doctors, ...
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Subject: Talking more with Willing to Bet--The Whole Comment I hope
Posted On: May 12, 2006, 2:50 pm CDT
Posted By: dothetime
Comment:
Re. "accounted for 15 percent of the money paid out in settlements or verdicts."
This is a small fraction of overall medical costs-- far less than 1% of total. This should be a non-issue, but it is part of a political war instead for reasons touched on below.
"The issue is tort reform is needed to protect outlandish verdicts from liberal jury's and courts"
There already exist many judicial mechanisms for reduction/revocation of awards. They are frequently used by judges (first instance and appeals) in such circumstances. The big awards hit the headlines; the reductions/revocations of the big awards rarely do.
Re. "Why are there 40% groundless claims made by individuals?"
Some small portion of these is undoubtedly brought by outright dishonest people--nevertheless, also involved are cases where professional standards need to be established through litigation (the American way in so many things) or the plaintiff feels wronged but discovers through litigation that from a judicial point of view no fault occurred (a common occurrence in business and other litigation). Dishonest people bring plenty of litigation of all kinds--we are not trying to cap everything, although perhaps we will be.
Access to justice for individuals requires increasingly large amounts of capital. Moneyed interests wish to put monetary caps on settlements to make cases, bad AND good, unattractive for attorneys to invest in and to pursue. If these interests can get them out of one area of litigation, they can then find it easier to get them out of another area of injustice, until all our civil courts' time is consumed with big capital business vs. business ligitation (which is in fact increasingly the case--with all the talk about PI lawyers, business vs business litigation is far more common, expensive and time consuming). Why not cap patent awards at $750,000? (as was definitely not the case in the Blackberry matter recently). Well, then we would have more patent violations and the value of patents would decline. Extend this logic to med mal and doctors', hospitals' and HMOs' conduct where the currency is your life, well-being and quality of life. Not a good solution.
Requiring the loser to pay the winner creates similar problems (judges for the most part are already in a position to punish those who bring fraudulent and frivolous lawsuits and some do so. Some of these do hit the headlines, but not many).
"Have you offered any other suggestions?"
Yes, let the system continue to function as it is. Let more substantial research such as the article under discussion be funded and be done. It will show our current American way, while--as the saying goes--is not the best or only possible way--is the best way we have. The tools we need regarding fraudulent and frivolous lawsuits and large verdicts are already in place. There is no need to distort the system with artificial caps (where do they get these low, low numbers from anyway?)
Malpractice is just an emotion-laden stalking horse (with quasi-labor union behavior by medical professionals--how ironic) to put caps on settlements in one area: starve plaintiff's lawyers, so they can be rolled out of other areas of redress for individuals' grievances and the moneyed interests can dominate and control access to the courts. Think about the individual's role in this universe. Think about youself in such a circumstance. Do you have $150-250,000 laying around to pursue compensation if you are disabled for life or burdened for life with a dependent? What would you do? Not a pretty picture.
In the big picture, this is not about med mal at all. This is about big capital and political power, a Congress owned by lobbyists and an attack on a source of election funding for their political enemies--the PI lawyers. Everyone despises lawyers, until they need a good one who will fight for their perception of right. Use the tools we have.
Pay attention to the other 99%. Speaking of pay, what was the total of executive compensation for the top twenty five health care delivery entities? How do we rank the social utility of their compensation vs. medical costs? How does it compare to this "crisis" in med mal litigation or in medical costs? Not too well, but this never really hits the radar.
Most of these executive "bonus boys" (e.g. Scrushy--that's a particularly lurid example) never went to med school, and never put in the sleepless years of interns and residents. Their concepts of managed care have largely failed, but we still have the huge bureaucracies they rule over harassing doctors on every bill. What about addressing this expense? A cap on compensation of non-doctrs in health care management. Of course, everyone will say, this compensation is a market affair, but so is the med mal litigation "crisis." Why is one thing a crisis and the other not?
The more you focus on a problem, the broader it gets....
Like so many popular issues today, it has packaged by moneyed interests (the non-liberal media and the faux liberal-media owned by moneyed interests) in a small and phony frame filled with false contrasts and false choices.
Subject: Talking more with Willing to Bet--The Whole Comment I hope
This is a small fraction of overall medical costs-- far less than 1% of total. This should be a non-issue, but it is part of a political war instead for reasons touched on below.
"The issue is tort reform is needed to protect outlandish verdicts from liberal jury's and courts"
There already exist many judicial mechanisms for reduction/revocation of awards. They are frequently used by judges (first instance and appeals) in such circumstances. The big awards hit the headlines; the reductions/revocations of the big awards rarely do.
Re. "Why are there 40% groundless claims made by individuals?"
Some small portion of these is undoubtedly brought by outright dishonest people--nevertheless, also involved are cases where professional standards need to be established through litigation (the American way in so many things) or the plaintiff feels wronged but discovers through litigation that from a judicial point of view no fault occurred (a common occurrence in business and other litigation). Dishonest people bring plenty of litigation of all kinds--we are not trying to cap everything, although perhaps we will be.
Access to justice for individuals requires increasingly large amounts of capital. Moneyed interests wish to put monetary caps on settlements to make cases, bad AND good, unattractive for attorneys to invest in and to pursue. If these interests can get them out of one area of litigation, they can then find it easier to get them out of another area of injustice, until all our civil courts' time is consumed with big capital business vs. business ligitation (which is in fact increasingly the case--with all the talk about PI lawyers, business vs business litigation is far more common, expensive and time consuming). Why not cap patent awards at $750,000? (as was definitely not the case in the Blackberry matter recently). Well, then we would have more patent violations and the value of patents would decline. Extend this logic to med mal and doctors', hospitals' and HMOs' conduct where the currency is your life, well-being and quality of life. Not a good solution.
Requiring the loser to pay the winner creates similar problems (judges for the most part are already in a position to punish those who bring fraudulent and frivolous lawsuits and some do so. Some of these do hit the headlines, but not many).
"Have you offered any other suggestions?"
Yes, let the system continue to function as it is. Let more substantial research such as the article under discussion be funded and be done. It will show our current American way, while--as the saying goes--is not the best or only possible way--is the best way we have. The tools we need regarding fraudulent and frivolous lawsuits and large verdicts are already in place. There is no need to distort the system with artificial caps (where do they get these low, low numbers from anyway?)
Malpractice is just an emotion-laden stalking horse (with quasi-labor union behavior by medical professionals--how ironic) to put caps on settlements in one area: starve plaintiff's lawyers, so they can be rolled out of other areas of redress for individuals' grievances and the moneyed interests can dominate and control access to the courts. Think about the individual's role in this universe. Think about youself in such a circumstance. Do you have $150-250,000 laying around to pursue compensation if you are disabled for life or burdened for life with a dependent? What would you do? Not a pretty picture.
In the big picture, this is not about med mal at all. This is about big capital and political power, a Congress owned by lobbyists and an attack on a source of election funding for their political enemies--the PI lawyers. Everyone despises lawyers, until they need a good one who will fight for their perception of right. Use the tools we have.
Pay attention to the other 99%. Speaking of pay, what was the total of executive compensation for the top twenty five health care delivery entities? How do we rank the social utility of their compensation vs. medical costs? How does it compare to this "crisis" in med mal litigation or in medical costs? Not too well, but this never really hits the radar.
Most of these executive "bonus boys" (e.g. Scrushy--that's a particularly lurid example) never went to med school, and never put in the sleepless years of interns and residents. Their concepts of managed care have largely failed, but we still have the huge bureaucracies they rule over harassing doctors on every bill. What about addressing this expense? A cap on compensation of non-doctrs in health care management. Of course, everyone will say, this compensation is a market affair, but so is the med mal litigation "crisis." Why is one thing a crisis and the other not?
The more you focus on a problem, the broader it gets....
Like so many popular issues today, it has packaged by moneyed interests (the non-liberal media and the faux liberal-media owned by moneyed interests) in a small and phony frame filled with false contrasts and false choices.