As long as the adversarial system persists, patients will continue to lose:
“The problem with the adversarial system today is that a patient might deserve compensation but he can’t get it unless he proves that his doctor screwed up. His gain is the doctor’s loss, which is part of the theory of corrective justice. Well, that theory might work okay for certain business torts, but we think it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the medical sphere.”
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And health care providers should enjoy special status when it comes to being defendants in professional tort actions because….?
Hey Crim,
If you’d actually read the article in question, you’d never have made that comment. Nowhere does it even suggest that physicians get “special status”, as you phrased it.
I did read the article. What other professional group gets the same treatment as suggested by the article?
Here is a quick and easy solution to the malpractice question. Just go bare.
Why should any patient expect compensation unless he can prove that he has been harmed by his physician? By what notion of justice should anyone be entitled to exact compensation from another save being able to prove their case? The adversarial system has it easy enough, being able to shop around for so-called experts willing to testify one way or another for a fee.
The problem today is that the adversarial system has become an after-the fact effort to secure indemnity for disability. Blaming the doctor is merely the most ready and convenient way to do so.
The civil litigation system is adversarial regardless title of the defendant. Is the civil litigation system not as stressful for a plebeian defendant being sued for the farm when the plaintiff can bring a shyster lawyer and a shyster physician to proffer junk science theories of clinical causation such as “post-traumatic fibromyalgia” or the typical DJD that was somehow magically caused by a single event low-speed rear-end accident? The stress would be no different than a physician being sued for a junk science “John Edwards” type case. I am all for reform, but we need it across the board and not just have a special niche for physicians when it comes their status as defendants in bogus lawsuits.
Hey crim , must get job …………
must get a life too…..
Nothing of substance from the latter two of the insane clown posse? Duly noted.
So Medical Economics believes we should go to a no fault plan?
That’s not explaining tort reform at all. Every current tort reform proposal doesn’t change the patient win/doctor (more accurately, doctor’s insurer) loss dynamic, it simply caps what the patient can win.
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