But I don’t check to make sure that people have insurance before I ride with them. If I were worried enough about someone’s driving to check, I wouldn’t get in the car. To do so would be to somehow consider the risk of being dead or crippled acceptable as long as it might, after long litigation, come with some money. If I don’t accept the risk of uncompensated injury, I am not going to accept the risk of compensated injury either.

Contrary to the impression conveyed by the ads of some ambulance chasers, a stack of money does nothing to diminish chronic pain, the humiliation of perpetual incontinence, or the tragedy of irreversible brain damage.

I put medical care in the same risk category as renting a horse for a trail ride. I know it is dangerous and I accept the risk. If I don’t feel right about the horse, I don’t get on it–and that has no relationship to the fact that I have almost always signed a waiver for that activity. Waiver or no waiver, suit or no suit, If i break my neck and spend the rest of my life pissing myself, it will suck either way.

Who would track such a thing? The states largest malpractice insurer–their underwriter told me this.

In the day, physicians used to be required to cover them a certain number of days, as a condition of privileges. That’s long since passed. But I certainly remember the same clinics, covered by retired, volunteer docs.

They were thrilled to have a medical student to show around, and I took advantage of the educational opportunities. Learned a lot of medicine, and heard a lot of sea stories of times past. Battlefield medicine from WW-2. One doc was back behind Japanese lines with the Flying Tigers. All sorts of things to learn.

How sad that so much of that is gone because of legal fears. But he’s right, it just takes one avaricious nephew……..

It’s almost certain that this information is false. Who would track such a thing?

“If I didn’t trust a doctor’s skills enough to sign a waver,”

Even the best drivers have accidents.

I do think that these things are unreliable protection for the doctor. But then nothing is secure in this world and everything we do from the time we get up to the time we go to be exposes us to litigation and other risks. I think if a doc really wants to treat the poor for free, he will do it, if not, he will not.

My bigger concern with the deal would be simply that I like to pay my doctors cash myself–no third party payments, no charity. I think the money seals the covenant. Charitable giver-supplicant is a whole different relationship that I would rather avoid.

I am told that in my state most malpractice suits are by the uninsured and those on medicaid. Funny how going to the very same doctors, those who pay for the care are happier with their care. I doubt that it is just the doctor whose attitude is being changed. “Give 10 friends money and you will make 9 enemies and 1 ingrate” seems to apply to free medical care as well.

In that light, wouldn’t it be better to charge the poor a small fee–just to keep the roles straight.

If they would get rid of the liability- pass a state constitutional amendment that raises the bar for legal action to gross, unconscionable negligence (i.e., operating drunk), decrease the documentation requirement to just what is medically required, and just cut all the JCAHO bullshit out of medicine for free clinics, they would be overrun with docs and nurses who would be delighted to volunteer to help the poor, just to be able to practice for the good of it. I would be happy to work a day or two in a free clinic every month under these conditions, and would be able to do twice the work that I can do in the over-regulated CYA environment that is my community hospital.