This sounds like the same complaint from the horse drawn carriage & buggy whip manufacturers association. The real concern is that the state professional regulatory boards stay on the job to prevent providers from believing they can now afford to be sloppy or skrimp on the levil of care.
What are these guys smoking? The tort reform just protects against exhorbitant awards. The nursing home can still get sued for regular damages plus the $250,000 non-compensatory. They could easily be liable for $300,000 or more on a single bed sore case. Texas nursing homes have traditionally been worse than the national average for decubidous ulcers (bed sores).
Tort reform is meant to eliminate frivolous law suits and exhorbitant jury awards. If a patient was legitimately injured due to negligence of a doctor or a healthcare institution they can and should sue for damages. If the judges in Texas are bored that indicates that there were a lot of frivolous suits before the tort reform. Patients can still get compensated for legitimate damages plus $250,000.
Exactly: the real concern is for those with horrendous injuries caused by the drunk or careless doctor or surgeon. So, you lose your eyesight, you didn’t have income (homemaker, but you can’t read without learning braille, you can’t golf anymore or drive a car or see your grandchildren, or your permanently disfigured and people are so uncomfortable being around you that you have few companions. Is it necessarily true that no one has pain in suffering that shouldn’t be valued higher than $250K? It’s a pity. Because judges won’t use their authority and control those truly excess verdicts of which there were many. I would have preferred to see some guidelines for values put in place.
And how many “drunk and careless” doctors do you think are running around the OR? Most med mal cases don’t come close to meeting the standard for malpractice. People are simply angry that they didn’t get the outcome they wanted. Doctors and surgical outcomes aren’t perfect. Even if a doctor makes a mistake, I don’t believe he/she should be penalized for it and it certainly isn’t malpractice. 99.9% of medical professional do the absolute best they can for their patients. That has to be good enough. Check out the following definition of malpractice to put this into perspective:
mal·prac·tice /mælˈpræktɪs/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[mal-prak-tis] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
—noun 1. Law. failure of a professional person, as a physician or lawyer, to render proper services through reprehensible ignorance or negligence or through criminal intent, esp. when injury or loss follows.
2. any improper, negligent practice; misconduct or misuse.
So when can we expect Texas medical providers (especially hospitals and diagnostic providers) to start lowering their fees and passing on those savings from malpractice insurance premiums or those exposures down to their customers/patients?
And as for more trials resulting from tort reforms results, that is great! Mediations over the past 15 years have gone from being worthwhile exercises to just another costly method to generate fees, for manipulating discovery and in putting on a show for the clients.
I’m a veteran med-mal guy just retired and handled Texas from ‘way back in the bad old days to earlier this year – completely agree w/ Bill – and – cat cases (blindness, gork’d kids, etc.)still have the capacity to generate box cars numbers as the specials are NOT capped and run into the millions – Texans should be rejoicing at the reduction in litigation and I also agree the mediation in Texas has become a farce
So, Bill:
I do the very best I can when I drive my car and 99% of the time I drive perfectly. If I cause an accident during the 1% of the time, by your standards, there should be caps on damages that can be awarded against me. How much sense does that make. Healthcare providers undertook a profession that they KNEW would cause injury or death if they made a mistake. Enacting limits on damages when every insurance executive in the country that has testified, says there are no frivolous medical malpractice claims of any significance. There are no objective statistics that would support your position and the Judge is correct any tort problems lie in trial judges not willing to “correct” emotional verdicts.
Do you have any knoweldge of insurance. You, very easily and ignorantly, compare two distinct different standards for liability in an auto accident and malpractice. The auto accidnet requires common ordinaty every day negligance only. As pointed out by definaition by another poster, teh standard for malpractice is more stringent. Therefore your analogy is invalid.
Joe: have you ever handled professional libaility claims? Auto negligence is a departure from what an ordinary driver would do and medical malpractice is a departure from what an ordinary helathcare provider would do. There is no “higher standard”, it is simply a different yardstick. Besides the analogy in the context of tort reform is still valid.
And, yes, I was with the insurance industry in the areas of property/casualty and professional libility claims for 15 years and have since specialized in professional libaility claims for 15 years.
This sounds like the same complaint from the horse drawn carriage & buggy whip manufacturers association. The real concern is that the state professional regulatory boards stay on the job to prevent providers from believing they can now afford to be sloppy or skrimp on the levil of care.
What are these guys smoking? The tort reform just protects against exhorbitant awards. The nursing home can still get sued for regular damages plus the $250,000 non-compensatory. They could easily be liable for $300,000 or more on a single bed sore case. Texas nursing homes have traditionally been worse than the national average for decubidous ulcers (bed sores).
Tort reform is meant to eliminate frivolous law suits and exhorbitant jury awards. If a patient was legitimately injured due to negligence of a doctor or a healthcare institution they can and should sue for damages. If the judges in Texas are bored that indicates that there were a lot of frivolous suits before the tort reform. Patients can still get compensated for legitimate damages plus $250,000.
Exactly: the real concern is for those with horrendous injuries caused by the drunk or careless doctor or surgeon. So, you lose your eyesight, you didn’t have income (homemaker, but you can’t read without learning braille, you can’t golf anymore or drive a car or see your grandchildren, or your permanently disfigured and people are so uncomfortable being around you that you have few companions. Is it necessarily true that no one has pain in suffering that shouldn’t be valued higher than $250K? It’s a pity. Because judges won’t use their authority and control those truly excess verdicts of which there were many. I would have preferred to see some guidelines for values put in place.
So, Bill, they can get up to $250K in non-legitimate damages? What would those be?
And how many “drunk and careless” doctors do you think are running around the OR? Most med mal cases don’t come close to meeting the standard for malpractice. People are simply angry that they didn’t get the outcome they wanted. Doctors and surgical outcomes aren’t perfect. Even if a doctor makes a mistake, I don’t believe he/she should be penalized for it and it certainly isn’t malpractice. 99.9% of medical professional do the absolute best they can for their patients. That has to be good enough. Check out the following definition of malpractice to put this into perspective:
mal·prac·tice /mælˈpræktɪs/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[mal-prak-tis] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
—noun 1. Law. failure of a professional person, as a physician or lawyer, to render proper services through reprehensible ignorance or negligence or through criminal intent, esp. when injury or loss follows.
2. any improper, negligent practice; misconduct or misuse.
So when can we expect Texas medical providers (especially hospitals and diagnostic providers) to start lowering their fees and passing on those savings from malpractice insurance premiums or those exposures down to their customers/patients?
And as for more trials resulting from tort reforms results, that is great! Mediations over the past 15 years have gone from being worthwhile exercises to just another costly method to generate fees, for manipulating discovery and in putting on a show for the clients.
The real issue here is that limiting the non-economic damages cuts into the lawyers’ portion of the judgement.
I’m a veteran med-mal guy just retired and handled Texas from ‘way back in the bad old days to earlier this year – completely agree w/ Bill – and – cat cases (blindness, gork’d kids, etc.)still have the capacity to generate box cars numbers as the specials are NOT capped and run into the millions – Texans should be rejoicing at the reduction in litigation and I also agree the mediation in Texas has become a farce
So, Bill:
I do the very best I can when I drive my car and 99% of the time I drive perfectly. If I cause an accident during the 1% of the time, by your standards, there should be caps on damages that can be awarded against me. How much sense does that make. Healthcare providers undertook a profession that they KNEW would cause injury or death if they made a mistake. Enacting limits on damages when every insurance executive in the country that has testified, says there are no frivolous medical malpractice claims of any significance. There are no objective statistics that would support your position and the Judge is correct any tort problems lie in trial judges not willing to “correct” emotional verdicts.
Hipstan:
Do you have any knoweldge of insurance. You, very easily and ignorantly, compare two distinct different standards for liability in an auto accident and malpractice. The auto accidnet requires common ordinaty every day negligance only. As pointed out by definaition by another poster, teh standard for malpractice is more stringent. Therefore your analogy is invalid.
Joe: have you ever handled professional libaility claims? Auto negligence is a departure from what an ordinary driver would do and medical malpractice is a departure from what an ordinary helathcare provider would do. There is no “higher standard”, it is simply a different yardstick. Besides the analogy in the context of tort reform is still valid.
And, yes, I was with the insurance industry in the areas of property/casualty and professional libility claims for 15 years and have since specialized in professional libaility claims for 15 years.
Hipstan:
Sorry to hear you have been in the inusrance industry for that long and still have no concept of the different degrees of negligance
So when can I get some real reform in my state? I want lawyers to have to actually work for a living and I want judges available to try some cases.
should be negligence in my last post