Stossel on trial lawyers: "For every little guy they help, they hurt thousands"

I couldn’t have put it better myself:

For the lawyers and people like me, a lawsuit is just another part of our work, but for most people, it’s a life-wrecking experience. Nurses are terrified. Doctors can’t sleep. Their hard-earned reputations are trashed by newspapers quoting plaintiffs’ lawyers, who paint deceitful pictures of the doctors’ incompetence and negligence. The doctors are forced to hire defense lawyers who eat up their time, energy and entire life savings. Patients suffer while their physicians spend several hours a week with attorneys, preparing for and giving depositions. The suit drags on for years.

Soon doctors begin practicing hyper-defensive medicine, ordering expensive and largely unnecessary tests to avoid lawsuits. Some of the tests are painful for the patients. Today, 51 percent of doctors recommend invasive procedures like biopsies more often than they believe are medically necessary.

Doctors become more secretive, talk less openly with patients and become averse to acknowledging any mistake. Insurance premiums rise, and both doctors and hospitals pass the cost on to patients. Newly fearful, the medical device manufacturer decides to stick to proven technologies, dropping its plan to pursue a new line of tools that would make surgery less painful and less risky. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Update:
This post has been fixed.

Related posts:

1. Malpractice defense lawyers: Do they lead physicians astray?
2. Stossel on vaccine lawyers: "Scaring people for money"
3. How trial lawyers will solve the specialist shortage in the ED
4. Stossel gets it right, again
5. Are doctors are hurt financially by single-payer health care?
6. Ann Coulter on doctors and lawyers
7. Stossel in the WSJ

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