A lawsuit hits a physician very personally, which lawyers always fail to understand:
“I hear you joined the club,” he repeated. “I read in the paper today you’re being sued.” I nearly dropped the phone and fell over. It was a local paper in Oregon to which he referred, no longer part of my world. I’d heard not a damn thing about it; didn’t know by whom or over what. But it hit me like… well, it hit me like a lawsuit. And it was only the first blow in a series that lasted over a couple of years, wrenching me back and forth, up and down, tearing me apart in every possible way. Robbing my sleep, souring my outlook, breaking my cherry in the most bloody of ways. At the time my dad was Chief Judge of the Oregon Court of Appeals. My brother was (and is) a very big-time lawyer. Neither of them ever understood how or why it was so deeply painful. “Why are you taking it so personally,” they’d ask, completely seriously. “It’s just the way the system works.”
Update:
Here’s part 2.
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{ 8 comments }
Think of all the poor third parties that you hurt in the same way when it comes to supporting junk science PI and WC cases. The providers are only reaping what they have sown as per their actions of feeding the litigation machine.
Criminallopath, you are a jerk and clearly a monomaniac. You have made no contribution at all here. Did you get burned on a PI WC case somewhere in your past. You just can’t seem to leave that alone.
You are way out of line, “criminallopath.” Your posts are always boring and repetitive. This time you are both offensive and ignorant. Did you even read the story? What in the world does it have to do with personal injury and worker’s comp? You’ve only got one idea, and you childishly apply it across the board. Keep your useless drivel to yourself!!!
To the first anonymous – Sorry, medical worship and feeling sorry for providers that get shafted by the same system that they liberally use when lying on behalf of patients making junk science PI and WC claims for the enrichment of the scammers, the providers and the ATLA members is not something that I am going to engage in. I will “leave it alone” the day that the providers stop their incessent whining about being defendants while at the same time supporting junk litigation cases in which they profiteer.
As far as the second anonymous goes – you sir, are a certifiable idiot. If you do not see the underlying paradigm that allows the ATLA to sodomize both the providers and innocent third party defendants (in which the proivders are co-sodomites) than you are clearly a cards short of a full deck. The only direction you should be giving is to your fellow short bus riders that on one hand wish to suckle at the ATLA teat as long as they can profiteer by participating in junk lawsuits against third parties but then cry like little babies when the ATLA turns on them and they get a taste of what it is like to be in the defendant’s chair. If you, as a provider, have ever supported a junk science “patient told me the aforementioned history… so it must be true” BS causation claim then you deserve nothing less than to be sued and lose everything that you have.
If the providers wish to argue that the entire tort system is junk and should be scrapped then they should make that arguement. On the other hand, the only complaints from the providers are when they are the defendants in the same system that they use to enrich themselves as either “consultants” or “treating physicians.”
To Criminallopath: Your ravings have the tone of a Unabomber-esque lunatic. I’ll bet you live alone, bathe infrequently, and mutter to yourself all day about this conspiracy. You poor thing – you obviously lost a personal injury or workers comp case and you blame the doctor. What was it, a head injury? Your thesis is absurd. It is not the same doctors “supporting junk science PI and WC cases” that are getting sued for malpractice. Do you have any proof that the doctor in this post ever had anything to do with a case that fits your beef? What about OB’s, who are being sued to extinction? Are they testifying against you in your WC claim?
There is an important point here. Expert witness testimony is completely unregulated and forms the basis of most of these cases. A discussion about the validity of that testimony would be valuable. You, sir, are not going to contribute anything to that discussion because you turn people off. Comments like “you deserve nothing less than to be sued and lose everything that you have” expose you as an extremist nut.
Good luck with that manifesto Mr. Kaczynskiopath, the BloggoRaver.
Why don’t you tell us your story, criminallopath? Obviously you have one to tell. Dr. Schwab gave us the painful details of his case. You could do the same. Maybe then we could understand why you are so angry. Just an idea.
Let us get the following out of the way.
To the first anonymous. I bet you drug and rape your male patients while molesting your pediatric cases. You lie to your female patients about how your wife was a gold digging heridan and how you would leave her in an instant if said patient were to engage in sexual acts with you. Simultaneously you write prescriptions for narcotic pain medications as if they were candy and are the single source supplier for the local prescription drug ring. You conduct unnecessary and unneeded surgeries on your patients in order to scam Medicaid and third party insurers. Your carelessness and ineptitude results in the deaths of numerous patients. You write these off as “bad outcomes.”
You see how this goes? You know nothing about me and I know nothing about you. So let us leave the armchair pseudoscience pop pshychiatry at home. BTW, I have never been sued nor have I sued anybody else. One would be daft to open a business and hire workers domestically if it could be avoided secondary to the rape of WC and the demands of further allopathic enrichment by means of providing employer healthcare.
Now, on with the discussion at hand. The underlying paradigm for PI cases and Med Mal cases is the same – junk science testimony used by the members of the ATLA to obtain money from the perceived “deep pockets.” In the PI world this junk science is manifested by “clinical” causation testimony. Causation is not attributed based on a diagnostic indicator that is hallmark of the claimed history but is instead based on the assumed veracity of the litigant. This is manifested with typical statements such as “patient denied prior history and claimed that they were injured in the accident thusly diagnosis XXX was caused by the accident.” This methodology is nothing more than a steaming pile of cow dung on a cold midwestern morning. There is zero science in parroting the words of a litigant when it comes to the object establishment of causality. In the majority of these cases the clinician is either incapable or unwilling to actually evaluate the history itself to determine if the claim of the patient/litigant is accurate, correct or within the bounds of scientific reason. Any physician that has engaged in causation attribution based on the pressence of a diagnosis and the “history” of a litigant/patient has engaged in this form of junk science. It should come as no surprise to the MDieties that patients will lie or engage in compensation neurosis when it comes to tort actions. Physicians are more than happy to engage in these third party rapes engineered by the ATLA. This is usually done under the guise of “patient advocate” but in reality is nothing more than a physician whoring themselves to the ATLA member in order to scam third party dollars for the “treatment” provided to the litigant. Providers are even willing to create new junk science diagnoses to aid in this raping – Railway spine, fibromyalgia, PTSD (from auto accidents that are no more severe than a clutch stall) or relate age/degenerative conditions to single event minor incidents in which no objective mechanism of injury is present. The same bad science paradigm is present in med mal cases (see the whole junk science work of John Edwards). The difference? The same litigant/patient is now a liar (because it is the MD that is being sued) and providers are willing to rape one of their own at the behest and with the funding of the trial lawyers.
My sympathy for the medical providers would be infinately increased if they were to actually denounce the whole tort system when the actionable cause was based on junk science. Instead we see either the quiet or blatant hypocrisy of demanding change in the med mal system while allowing the cash cow PI business to continue as is. This smaks of provider=defedant=bad but provider=profiteer=good or provider=rape victim=bad but provider=rapist=good. Think about this the next time you engage in “cause attribution” based solely on the assumed veracity of a patient.
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