And your proposal is. . . .? And addresses these criticisms how. . . ?

“Tort reform seems to balance the ability for an injured party to be compensated while providing insurance coverage to the doctors in the state.”

If damage caps were shown to affect the amount of coverage available, this might be a factor. Unfortunately, it hasn’t. The number of insurers in a state is not a function of damage caps, it’s a function of the broader economy.

All damage caps do is limit the ability of those who don’t have much in economic damages (stay at home moms, children, elderly) to get to court. If that’s your goal, then damage caps are your thing. They also help make sure insurance companies, which are in the business of insuring risk, face less risk. I guess if you’re an insurance executive, that’s also a good thing. I am unaware of a constitutional right to insurer profits, though.

If you’re interested in true justice, why are you capping the damages of those with the most devastating injuries? If you want more injured patients to get paid, why not put a floor on claims as well as a cap? The truth is, you don’t.

Another cost of litigation are the fees associated with hiring experts to support the Plaintiffs’ case, while it is true that these costs are often fronted by Plaintiffs’ counsel, those fees are deducted from the Plaintiffs’ recovery. Often times, it ends up being a 1/3% split between attorney fees, costs to litigate suit, and the remaining 1/3 to the Plaintiff in a recovery in a typical medical malpractice case.

Next, the limitations on damages are usually limited to general damages or those for “pain and suffering”. It also includes caps on the value of a life in a wrongful death case. However for those who survive, and who are damaged by inability to work, function, etc., or “special damages” there are no caps on those damages that I know of. So if an attorney collects $300K for general damages and $700K for the special damages the Plaintiffs’ attorney is entitled to basing his take on the entire $1 million; maybe this is an area that needs to be changed such that much less money is taken from the special damage award. Of course the Plaintiffs’ bar would never agree!

Any good Plaintiffs’ medical malpractice attorney will have a case evaluated by a qualified expert prior to taking on the case. It is true that med mal cases are often unsuccessful, the ones that are successful and make it to the papers are the cases that encourage filing of other cases that are less meritorious. Physician insurers are not as greedy as you would all like to think; they actually will resolve meritorious cases, with the physician’s consent, because they don’t want to pay a defense attorney to defend a case that they will lose anyway; that costs even more money. The cases I end up litigating are always supported by an expert review and the likelihood that the doctor will prevail at trial is usually 70% or better.

I believe that injured parties should be compensated. However there are alot of stretching going on in terms of what an “injured party” is. Tort reform seems to balance the ability for an injured party to be compensated while providing insurance coverage to the doctors in the state. It is a good rather than bad thing.

It turns out that people don’t like any system that might involve others judging their work and assessing it for errors. Did we need a survey to tell us that?

One funny thing about that 74% stat is that a large number of physicians have received the “benefits” of tort reform in the last five years. Wonder why their satisfaction hasn’t increased. Yet another lie of the caps lobby.

90% of American teenagers think that their curfew is too early. Have we learned anything about the merits of curfews for teenagers?

The Atlanta Business Chronicle (11/6) reported that “seventy-four percent of American physicians believe they have less control over the way they practice medicine than they did five years ago, mostly due to medical malpractice litigation,” according to a survey released last week by Atlanta-based Jackson Healthcare. The survey found that “the majority, 85 percent, said the threat of medical malpractice litigation is their primary hindrance to practicing medicine as they see fit.”

As for the stat, there isn’t one. Most malpractice doesn’t get compensated. I agree. In fact most people don’t even know that malpractice caused their injury when it does. I’m all for a proposal that compensates more people. And faster. So what should we do to make that happen?

Why would you cap what one side can pay it’s attorneys but not the other side? Fairness?

” Kevin backed his op-ed with facts and statistics, the converse of his argument has yet to put up a single statistic.”

Did you read the editorial? Kevin didn’t make an argument. He stated some criticisms (some legit, some not so much), and then mused about options, mostly discussing his own opinions on them, without any facts to bolster those opinions. He didn’t really tell if you if the options address his criticisms of our current system, he just mentioned they existed. What is there to argue about? I agree, there are other ways that this issue is addressed in the world. OK, now tell me how they address the issues with ours that were raised. Tell me how they would work with our healthcare system, given that we do not have the universal healthcare many other countries have. Until you do, you’re not making much of an argument for change.

I thought Kevin’s post was pretty weak tea when it came to the issue. It didn’t tell you much. Which is about what you expect from a USA Today op-ed and given the space constraint.

“Until you do you are wasting everyone’s time.”

Then don’t read my posts. Easy solution to that problem, don’t you think?