Posted on 08/23/2009 6:00:07 PM PDT by parsifal
In 1975, Indiana lobbyist Frank Cornelius, whose clients included the Insurance Institute of Indiana, helped secure passage of a $500,000 cap on medical malpractice awards and elimination of all damages for pain and suffering in Indiana. As he wrote in the New York Times on October 7, 1994, he now “rue[s] that accomplishment.” Beginning in 1989, Frank Cornelius experienced a series of medical catastrophes that resulted in his wheelchair confinement, respirator-assisted breathing and constant physical pain.
(Excerpt) Read more at kraftlaw.com ...
Like we say about Obama care, if its good enough for us, its good enough for the politicians. So, if tort reform is good for us, why ain't it good enough for these advocates of tort reform?
parsy, who is getting more information all the time
Unfortunately, the old saying is true “America has the best government that money can buy”. It does not matter which party we are talking about - they are both corrupt to the core.
The problem is how do we change this?
Well, the first thing we do, is not give up our right to sue them.
parsy, who is still giggling about Santorum
bookmark
We need tort reform! If Bush didn’t want it, and the liberals think he was stupid, we may have what we need!
Isn’t it strange that only PUBs are hypocrites. I guess the darlings on the left have never committed a wrong that we need to know about.
What is pain and suffering worth?
Should a person who is injured be compensated for P&S?
Medical is clear, lost wages clear but there is pain and suffering - how much is to much, to little?
Regarding the issue of "hypocrisy", that's for the Moslems and the Leftwingtards to worry about.
Oh, the darlings of the left screw up all the time. On FR, we hear about them all the time. Like I said above, if Obama care is good enough for us, why ain’t it good enough for the politicians? But on tort reform, the GOP has been pulling a fast one for years. So, the real question is, how do you feel about these people selling “tort reform” for you, while they do the opposite for them?
parsy, who wants to know
Please private mail me where I mis-read, so I can review on that thread. Thx.
parsy, who doesn’t remember this
In 2001, I was a risk management officer for a Texas not-for-profit hospital company. Costs of medical malpractice litigation were threatening the viability of our organization. I became very involved with tort reform efforts and am very pleased with the results. We passed reforms which insured the right of persons injured by medical malpractice to recover ALL of their medical, lost wages and other economic damages...past AND future. We placed caps of no more than $750,000 for pain and suffering. This took the “Russian roulette” effect of taking a case to trial off the table. The result was a huge decrease in costs. Our organization took the savings and plowed them into providing improved quality of care and even more charity care. Perhaps someone on the left, other than a trial lawyer, will enlighten me on how this was a bad thing?
The Leftwingtards want America to look and act like Europe. I'd rather fry them in electric chairs than let that happen.
Last I checked, bush and santorum were not in power. we need to focus on the enemy we’re facing now—hussein.
We change it by using the Internet to give the people a voice in our democracy.
ex animo
davidfarrar
Several reasons. There is a general conception that “tort reform” has to be a part of “any” health care plan, and we may get an “any” plan. The GOP is already clamoring for tort reform, including now Sarah Palin. And, even if it doesn’t get included in “any” health care reform, individual states are still battle grounds for this.
And a lot of conservatives, libertarians, republicans, still have this idea that “tort reform” is a good thing and necessary for reducing health care costs, and business costs.
Thru the U S Constitution and most state constitutions we are granted a right to a civil jury trial. That right don’t mean much, if the jury is restricted from the get go.
Imagine someone was out there day after day trying to infringe upon our right to bear arms. What if in state after state that right was slowly eroded away. One state requires registration of all firearms, including the ones grandpa left you. Another state restricts your right to buy more than one gun per month. Another requires you keep your gun(s) in a police locker unless you are going out hunting or target shooting.
What if someone said we don’t need health care reform. Just take away everybody’s guns and the murder rate will go down, and emergency room surgery for gun shot victims will go down. You know, “No health care reform without Gun Control”
Would that get you motivated? What kind of numbers would you want to go out and find? Would you look for the health care costs associated with gunshot wounds? If you found it was less than 1%, would you tell people? I would, and I am.
So as to why so much now from me, it started with one thread. Then Sarah Palin came out with her statement. Then I found the Bob Beckel one so I posted a thread. Then another thread on Sarah and Bob came out. So I got to arguing. Then I discovered the Frank Cornelius story thru another freeper, which led me to the hypocrite story, so I did a thread on it.
Overall, as Americans, we need to be able to go before 12 other Americans and tell our story, and if the big boys don’t like, tough. It’s our constitutional right.
parsy, who says this is why.
sarah palin and rick perry brought tort reform to their states and they are doing quite nicely. Real reform has to come from outside DC
Citizens may not sue the Govt unless it agrees to be sued.
When we are stuck with Govt healthcare, you can bet Govt will not allow suits.
Let me, on the right, tell you. First, the cap got lowered to $500,000. Second, the cost of health care in Texas did not decrease. It rose about 40%, the third highest rate of increase in the country. And a lot of the victims of malpractice are left out in the cold. On medicaid, where you don’t see the costs.
From your job, please tell us about the malpractice that went on.
parsy, who sincerely wants to know.
I don’t know about Alaska. Texas ain’t doing so hot. Are you interested?
parsy, who can get you some links.
texas unemployment is 2 percentage points below the national average. Lots of people are moving to texas because it is a better opportunity
A lot of people are moving to the South, period. They are tired of the northeast cities, high prices, and crap weather. So if people are moving to Texas, I bet it has squat to do with tort reform.
parsy, who says the answers are out there
Comparing the right to bear arms(a constitutional right), to going before a jury to bankrupt doctors, clinics, hospitals, etc,( so that thieves like John Edwards can become multi millionaries) is so way off that it would be like comparing apples with horse dong. Way off.
they are leaving california so it’s not the weather. you cut taxes, including the ‘tort tax,’ and people and jobs will follow.
And why is it necessary? Do you know what percentage of overall health care costs, malpractice insurance represents?
parsy, who says read the Seventh Amendment
we also need tort reform simply to weaken the trial lawyers-one of the largest supporters of the dems.
Legalize prostitution and gambling and people will probably follow, too. Don’t mean its a good thing.
parsy, the wry
* More than 10 new insurance carriers entered the Texas market, increasing competition and further lowering costs.
* As a result, Texas doctors have seen their insurance rates decline by, on average, 27 percent.
* The number of doctors applying to practice medicine in Texas has skyrocketed by 57 percent.
In all, in just the first five years after reforms passed, 14,498 doctors either returned to practice in Texas or began practicing here for the first time.
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18325
well if we had more doctors and fewer lawsuits, that would be better for this country
from Dallas Dirt:
FORT SMITH, Arkansas, January 2, 2009) - An annual report released by ABF U-Pack Moving® indicates that more people moved to Texas from within the U.S. than any other state in the union. Northeastern states, particularly in the Rust Belt, continue to lose residents to other states.
When looking at volume of moves, New York, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania represented significant outbound activity. Southern states continue to see a higher influx of interstate moves, particularly North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.
It is interesting to pause and think about where people are moving from, where they are moving to and why.” Ingram notes several big events in 2008 which are discussed in the report and could potentially affect moving trends over the next year. Headline events such as the housing foreclosure crisis and the struggling American automotive industry could have an affect on long distance moving. Ingram points out that these trends are socially significant. “Population shifts can have a ripple effect, determining things like the tax base for cities, thriving economies or how many Electoral College votes and representatives a state receives,” Ingram adds.
Northeastern states top the lists for high percentages of outbound interstate moves including New Jersey in the top spot. In addition to “The Garden State” the top ten include Delaware, Rhode Island, Nevada, Michigan, California, Alaska, Connecticut, New York and Florida.
Didn’t see tort reform in there. And, gee, they are leaving Alaska?
parsy, who double checks
Baby, they lied!
http://www.saynotocaps.org/newsarticles/baby%20i%20lied.htm
parsy, who says compare your link with the details in this one.
bttt
Because it is. I have spent 20 years on the front lines of this issue. I can tell you that if the threat of frivolous law suites were eliminated, there would be a dramatic reduction in unnecessary testing in heath care. I see it every day. I order many of those tests myself because of what I have witnessed.
The “threat” of frivolous lawsuits? What do you mean the “threat.”? Have you ever consulted an attorney as to what is actionable in your particular state? Do you think you can be sued for just nothing?
Please explain what kind of test you order and why if you know they are unnecessary, you order them?
parsy, who has also spent a few years on the line
ah yes...but it is not just ‘people’ moving to texas at a high rate...it is doctors.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9501E4DB1330F936A35753C1A9619C8B63
Four years after Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, doctors are responding as supporters predicted, arriving from all parts of the country to swell the ranks of specialists at Texas hospitals and bring professional health care to some long-underserved rural areas.
The influx, raising the state’s abysmally low ranking in physicians per capita, has flooded the medical board’s offices in Austin with applications for licenses, close to 2,500 at last count.
‘’It was hard to believe at first; we thought it was a spike,’’ said Dr. Donald W. Patrick, executive director of the medical board and a neurosurgeon and lawyer. But Dr. Patrick said the trend — licenses up 18 percent since 2003, when the damage caps were enacted — has held, with an even sharper jump of 30 percent in the last fiscal year, compared with the year before.
Dude, did you even read the articles? Try this one. Tort reform is irrelevant. It isn’t a big enough problem to hit the scene if it wasn’t for the lying insurance company shills, the GOP, and greedy doctors.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/06/atul-gawande-the-cost-conundrum-redux.html
parsy, who says please read the articles
“if it wasn’t for the lying insurance company shills, the GOP, and greedy doctors.”
LOL
Here, get it straight from the doctor’s mouth:
From the New Yorker, June 2009, by Atul Gawande
One night, I went to dinner with six McAllen doctors. All were what you would call bread-and-butter physicians: busy, full-time, private-practice doctors who work from seven in the morning to seven at night and sometimes later, their waiting rooms teeming and their desks stacked with medical charts to review.
Some were dubious when I told them that McAllen was the country’s most expensive place for health care. I gave them the spending data from Medicare. In 1992, in the McAllen market, the average cost per Medicare enrollee was $4,891, almost exactly the national average. But since then, year after year, McAllen’s health costs have grown faster than any other market in the country, ultimately soaring by more than ten thousand dollars per person.
“Maybe the service is better here,” the cardiologist suggested. People can be seen faster and get their tests more readily, he said.
Others were skeptical. “I don’t think that explains the costs he’s talking about,” the general surgeon said.
“It’s malpractice,” a family physician who had practiced here for thirty-three years said.
“McAllen is legal hell,” the cardiologist agreed. Doctors order unnecessary tests just to protect themselves, he said. Everyone thought the lawyers here were worse than elsewhere.
That explanation puzzled me. Several years ago, Texas passed a tough malpractice law that capped pain-and-suffering awards at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Didn’t lawsuits go down?
Practically to zero,” the cardiologist admitted.
“Come on,” the general surgeon finally said. “We all know these arguments are bullshit. There is overutilization here, pure and simple.” Doctors, he said, were racking up charges with extra tests, services, and procedures.
The surgeon came to McAllen in the mid-nineties, and since then, he said, “the way to practice medicine has changed completely. Before, it was about how to do a good job. Now it is about ‘How much will you benefit?’ ”
Everyone agreed that something fundamental had changed since the days when health-care costs in McAllen were the same as those in El Paso and elsewhere. Yes, they had more technology. “But young doctors don’t think anymore,” the family physician said.
The surgeon gave me an example. General surgeons are often asked to see patients with pain from gallstones. If there aren’t any complications—and there usually aren’t—the pain goes away on its own or with pain medication. With instruction on eating a lower-fat diet, most patients experience no further difficulties. But some have recurrent episodes, and need surgery to remove their gallbladder.
Seeing a patient who has had uncomplicated, first-time gallstone pain requires some judgment. A surgeon has to provide reassurance (people are often scared and want to go straight to surgery), some education about gallstone disease and diet, perhaps a prescription for pain; in a few weeks, the surgeon might follow up. But increasingly, I was told, McAllen surgeons simply operate. The patient wasn’t going to moderate her diet, they tell themselves. The pain was just going to come back. And by operating they happen to make an extra seven hundred dollars.
I gave the doctors around the table a scenario. A forty-year-old woman comes in with chest pain after a fight with her husband. An EKG is normal. The chest pain goes away. She has no family history of heart disease. What did McAllen doctors do fifteen years ago?
Send her home, they said. Maybe get a stress test to confirm that there’s no issue, but even that might be overkill.
And today? Today, the cardiologist said, she would get a stress test, an echocardiogram, a mobile Holter monitor, and maybe even a cardiac catheterization.
“Oh, she’s definitely getting a cath,” the internist said, laughing grimly.
Its a really good article. You can find it on that previous link I gave you to the New Yorker.
parsy, who is also LOL’ing, thinking of the look on your face when you read what the general surgeon says
yes, thanks for the anecdote from the liberal rag.
Now, the NYT is also a liberal rag but it actually quotes real doctors in support of a conservative position. But you can trust ‘Atul’ if you want...
interesting
Hey, it came straight from the doctor’s mouth. Think about it. A doctor can order some tests, blame it on a lawyer, while he keeps the money. Talk about a scam.
The point was, they had tort reform in Texas and the doctors still kept ordering the tests.
parsy, who says blame the doctors
I suggest you have a read of this article.
I've worked alongside doctors for many years, and there isn't one of them picturing the courtroom at the end of the tunnel with a lawyer stating, "But Doctor, you failed to use the machine that went PING, which as you know could have prevented your patient from dying!" Or, "Doctor, you failed to diagnose antidisestablishmentarianism in this patient, when the hospital had just installed a new machine that goes PING that would have diagnosed her injury."
Whether the threat is real or not, the patients think it is, the doctors think it is, and malpractice insurance costs drop dramatically in areas that enact tort reform.
Your overzealous defense of trial lawyers as all good and doctors as evil money grubbers just reeks of our current administration in Washington. Lawyers outnumber doctors in Congress probably on the order of 50 to 100 to 1. So whose benefit do you think they side with?
I read your link. Oh, God help us. Now the BS has spread to Hawaii. You might want to review some of the links I have provided above. They will give you a clearer picture of the situation.
parsy, who says and another one might bite the dust
I boo-boo’ed. This link was not above. Real good summary of the situation.
http://insurance-reform.org/TrueRiskF.pdf.
parsy, who is trying to stay awake
How would you have any clue what their motivations are?
I sure hope with your attitude that you don't actually get sick some day.
The advantage to the people in Indiana consists primarily of a lot of new hospitals, a plentitude of doctors with special skills available 24/7, and lower medical insurance and out of pocket health care costs.
The folks in Chicago still get their care, but they also get to see a lot of Northern Indiana countryside first! ~ oh, yes, and fewer visitors ~ it's a kind of long drive.
You are wrong. In some cases the cap on pain and suffering is $750,000. Tort reform was intended to increase access to health care. It succeeded in that. We have added doctors in Texas at nation-leading, record rates. More importantly, we have signicantly added doctors in high risk areas of practice and in geographical areas doctors were avoiding because of the malpractice plague. If it is true that Texas health care rates have risen drastically, that would be driven by the huge increase in uninnsureds in our state. Fortunately, because of tort reform, Texas providers have been able to successfully take on the burden of a huge increase in charity care.
We do continue to have instances of medical negligence. Those claims are paid. What we don’t see is a barrage of lawsuits from patients or family members who are unhappy with a medical outcome even though there has been no malpractice.
Gary??! It’s been a long time since I lived in the area but wow! I grew up in Southwest Michigan and drove to Chicago fairly frequently passing through the smoke of Gary. You could smell the place 10 miles before you reached it.
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