The Boston Globe looks at the difficulty in balancing justice and medicine in the malpractice crisis
“According to Howard, one of the chief problems is that juries must make decisions about ‘standard of care’ (the accepted norm from which a negligent doctor may have deviated), an area about which most jurors know little. And jury decisions apply only on a case-by-case basis. As a result, pain and suffering awards for the same injuries vary widely, while studies show that even ‘hard’ economic damage awards (such as lost wages and medical costs) can differ substantially as well. ‘There is a sort of lottery aspect to damage awards that is unfair to most plaintiffs,’ says Howard. ‘There’s no horizontal equity across the line.'”
