Free Republic

One of the many contentious issues in the national health care debate is something that began 34 years ago in California when Jerry Brown, in the first year of his first governorship, signed legislation imposing a $250,000 limit on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice cases. The version of a national health care bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through the House contains a provision that would push – but not quite compel – California and other states with malpractice damage caps to repeal them.

Dr Otto Chan told a hearing in East London that some doctors at the Royal London Hospital were ''exposed'' to procedures that they were not trained for. He said: ''The department was going rapidly backwards, I had real serious concerns about patient care in relation to the training programme. ''The junior staff in our department were doing too much unsupervised work.'' Dr Chan added: ''The juniors were being exposed to procedures that they were clearly not trained to do.'' The radiologist said junior doctors were sometimes given notes on how to do a procedure and ''being told to go and...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's willingness to consider alternatives to medical malpractice lawsuits is providing a boost for taking such cases out of the courtroom and letting experts, not juries, decide their merits. The idea of appointing neutral experts to sift malpractice facts from allegations appeals to conservatives in both political parties, who are looking to address medical liability as part of health care overhaul legislation. Trial lawyers remain steadfastly opposed.

<p>An Everett nursing home is facing a lawsuit after an elderly resident's genitals disintegrated while staff allegedly failed to act.</p> <p>Charles Bradley, then 93, arrived at Everett Care & Rehabilitation in the winter of 2004, suffering from the usual maladies of old age, according to court documents. He continued to live at the nursing home until two weeks before his death, which came on March 31, 2008, when he was rushed to the emergency room with a life-threatening -- but previously undetected -- malady.</p>

NEW YORK (Legal Newsline)-Medical malpractice litigation has driven up U.S. health care costs dramatically, translating into higher costs for consumers, a study said Tuesday. The report by the Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy said the direct cost of medical malpractice litigation is roughly $30.4 billion annually.

Litigation: The Founding Fathers envisioned the states as laboratories for ideas and choices. If the administration needs a demonstration project for successful tort reform, it need look no further than Mississippi. When President Obama said during his health care speech to Congress that he would "look into" malpractice reform and support "demonstration projects" at the state level, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a Republican, responded: "If they want a demonstration project, come down to Mississippi. I'll show you a demonstration project." Mississippi enacted tort reform in 2004, including caps on medical malpractice awards. As a result, the number of medical...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration is announcing $25 million in grants to states and health care systems to launch a national experiment on alternatives to medical malpractice lawsuits. The grants will be up to $3 million each for three years. They can be used to examine a broad range of ideas, including programs in which doctors and hospitals quickly acknowledge a mistake, offer an apology and restitution, and pledge to take corrective action.

Obviously, the "main stream" media are hard of hearing and seeing. About 2 million mad-as-hell taxpayers assembling in Washington, D.C. for the largest-ever (most well-behaved ever, most respectful ever) protest did not make it onto their radar screens (or our TV screens). They need our help. Maybe we cannot repeat an assembly of 2 million mad-as-hell taxpaying patriots in one place, but surely those who longed to go and couldn't would love to be a part of Operation "Can You Hear Us Now?" I'll bet for every one patriot who went to D.C. there are 10-20 more who wished they...

Barack Obama offered this "olive brancn" to Republicans during his health care overhaul speech to the joint session of Congress on Wednesday. After spending most of the speech deriding his opposition, Obama finally got to the subject of tort reform which the White Nouse had promised Obama would pursue to get Republicans on board.

BATON ROUGE -- Louisiana's top health official said Thursday that the state will keep an open mind on whether to apply for the demonstration projects touted by President Barack Obama this week as a way to reduce medical malpractice suits. But state Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine said the pilot programs Obama is proposing would likely be ineffective in reducing health-care costs unless they remove doctors' fears of getting sued. "The state of Louisiana would probably participate in anything that would help improve patient safety," Levine said. "But this is not real tort reform." Levine's comments came a day...

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wants levies on insurers to pay for Obamacare and fines for families who don't sign up. To keep Obamacare alive, Baucus has proposed a Rube Goldberg scheme of fees and fines on insurers and the uninsured designed to forcibly bring everyone into the loving and protective arms of the nanny state...

Health Overhaul Cost Cut to $900 Billion; Obama Warns GOP, Offers Malpractice Deal WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama, in a prime-time address to Congress on Wednesday, combined tough talk to opponents with fresh olive branches on policy to try to break the impasse on revamping health care.

Though the focus today may be on the massive push of the ObamaCare bill by liberal Democrats and the noisy minority opposition, there are solutions to some major headaches in Health Care staring us in the face. Problem is, no one chooses to see them.

News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher. With multimillion-dollar jury awards in medical malpractice suits driving up the cost of liability insurance for physicians -- and thus the cost of health care to consumers -- President Barack Obama today backed a health care malpractice reform plan that would create a "public option" law firm to sue doctors for "reasonable" damages. "We need to keep these ambulance-chasers honest," Obama said. "These sharks are becoming obscenely wealthy by tugging the heartstrings of compassionate jurors, who then grant ridiculous damage awards for pain and suffering, which makes malpractice insurance rates skyrocket and jacks...

President Obama, You have repeatedly trashed doctors in the US. And you claim that they are taking people's feet off, and removing tonsils simply because they want to make more money. They are greedy. You make these claims and sound so confident as if you have irrefutable proof. So let us see your proof. Tell congress to investigate the matter, they love investigations. America doesn't need any more of your demagoguery on this matter. If you are going to prosecute doctors who are committing a clear case of malpractice, then do so. If not, then put an end to these...

Health Costs: Lawyers are responsible for more unneeded procedures than "greedy" doctors. But instead of capping malpractice awards, bureaucrats will soon decide which treatments are OK and whether you're worth it.Health Costs: Lawyers are responsible for more unneeded procedures than "greedy" doctors. But instead of capping malpractice awards, bureaucrats will soon decide which treatments are OK and whether you're worth it.

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky talked about the high costs of health care today. In particular, Mr. McConnell pointed out how malpractice lawsuits affect how expensive healthcare can become. Dr. Orrin Devinsky, NYU Langone Medical Center neurologist and researcher agrees with Senator McConnell. Dr. Devinsky told the Washington Times,: "By some calculations forty-five to well over fifty percent of the money paid for malpractice actually goes to lawyers and administrators not to the patients. The large percentage of malpractice suits when reviewed independently of doctors and lawyers are felt not to be justified and many people who are wronged...

For patients with prostate cancer, it is a common surgical procedure: a doctor implants dozens of radioactive seeds to attack the disease. But when Dr. Gary D. Kao treated one patient at the veterans’ hospital in Philadelphia, his aim was more than a little off. Most of the seeds, 40 in all, landed in the patient’s healthy bladder, not the prostate. It was a serious mistake, and under federal rules, regulators investigated. But Dr. Kao, with their consent, made his mistake all but disappear. He simply rewrote his surgical plan to match the number of seeds in the prostate, investigators...

Of course Mr. Obama deserves credit for even referring to what he called the "real issue" of medical malpractice reform. The paragraph he appended to his stock speech on health care for the American Medical Association yesterday didn't offer much detail -- "I do think we need to explore a range of ideas," he boldly declared -- but trial lawyers and their stratospheric jury awards and settlements have led to major increases in the medical malpractice premiums, thus driving up the overall cost of U.S. health care. The system today is worse than random -- many lawsuits do not involve...

President Obama says he will not place caps malpractice awards: "Now, I recognize that it will be hard to make some of these changes if doctors feel like they're constantly looking over their shoulders for fear of lawsuits. I recognize that. (Applause.) Don't get too excited yet. Now, I understand some doctors may feel the need to order more tests and treatments to avoid being legally vulnerable. That's a real issue. (Applause.) Now, just hold on to your horses here, guys. (Laughter.) I want to be honest with you. I'm not advocating caps on malpractice awards -- (boos from some...

Barack Obama isn't used to hearing boos. For all the young president's popularity, the response he got Monday from doctors at an American Medical Association meeting was a sign his road is only going to get rockier as he tries to sell his plan to overhaul the nation's health care system. The boos erupted when Obama told the doctors in Chicago he wouldn't try to help them win their top legislative priority—limits on jury damages in medical malpractice cases. But what could they expect? If Obama announced support for malpractice limits, that would set trial lawyers and unions—major supporters of...

DAVIE, Fla. — When the sharp pain shooting through Lisa Strong's back got worse, she thought it was another kidney stone and expected the discomfort to pass. This time was different. Through a series of mistakes, miscommunications and misdiagnoses, she wound up having her arms and legs amputated. She sued the doctors, who essentially blamed one another for what everyone involved agrees were profound errors. Everyone except the jury that ruled against Strong.

I have a malpractice lawsuit I'm hoping to file, and I need to know if I've waited too long. Not long ago I had developed some severe back problems such that I couldn't walk, and was trying to apply for temporary disability benefits from my job. One day I got a call from my Primary Care Physician, who had been out because of a back injury herself and had not seen me for this problem. She said she had just received the paperwork for my disability application, and she then proceeded to berate me for being in pain, saying that...

Los Angeles County supervisors have agreed to pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the children of Edith Rodriguez, the woman who died after writhing in pain for 45 minutes on the waiting-room floor of Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Medical Center, according to an attorney representing the family. Rodriguez's death nearly two years ago attracted national attention, becoming a symbol of an indifferent emergency system. A triage nurse had dismissed her complaints in the early morning of May 9, 2007. A security videotape showed a janitor mopping around Rodriguez and other staff walking past.

Miami-A doctor's license was revoked Friday in the case of a teenager who planned to have an abortion but instead gave birth to a baby she says was killed when clinic staffers put it into a plastic bag and threw it in the trash. The doctor, Pierre Jean-Jacques Renelique, was not present when the baby was born, but the Florida Medical Board upheld Department of Health allegations that he falsified medical records, inappropriately delegated tasks to unlicensed personnel and committed malpractice. Joseph Harrison, the attorney representing Renelique at the license revocation hearing in Tampa, said Renelique has not decided whether...

Whenever President-elect Obama is asked how he'll pay for his ambitious health care reform plans, he invariably talks about the $80 billion in annual savings he'll get from bringing computerized recordkeeping to doctors' offices and hospitals. If only that were true. While there are benefits that might be had from using computers more widely in medicine, doing so won't save us any money and, in fact, will likely make things more expensive. There's even a chance that the quality of care might get worse along the way. ... But while paper records certainly have their inconveniences--filling out your thousandth questionnaire,...

Doctors' practice of "defensive medicine" widespread, costly November 17, 2008 12:34 PM Kay Lazar, Globe Staff The fear of being sued is driving Massachusetts physicians to order many tests, procedures, referrals to specialists and even hospitalizations for consumers that aren't needed and drive up health costs by more than $1.4 billion a year, according to a new study that is the first of its kind. The Massachusetts Medical Society surveyed 900 of its members, including family doctors, obstetricians and gynecologists and general surgeons, who reported practicing so-called "defensive medicine." The report found that 83 percent of physicians surveyed reported practicing...

The delivery options for pregnant women in the region just keep shrinking.

Wilmington, DE (AHN) - A man from Georgetown, Delaware has sued the Beebe Medical Center (BMC) in Lewes and its staff for allegedly wrongly declaring his wife dead in May last year. Johnson brought his wife to the hospital at 7:35 p.m. for treatment of indigestion but she soon suffered a heart attack at 8:05 p.m. Doctors called for Johnson, who was in the waiting room, and told him his wife did not respond to resuscitation and never regained a pulse so she was declared dead at 8:34 p.m. At 9:50 p.m., a nurse noticed Judith was still breathing and...

Preface: Last year in their quarterly journal, "Sexual Health", (2007, 4, 219-221) the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) published a guest editorial by Jo Wainer entitled "Abortion and the full humanity of women". Jo Wainer, widow of abortionist Bertram Wainer of the East Melbourne abortion clinic, is an ardent advocate for abortion rights. Charles Francis sent a response, but the CSIRO editors said he had to comply with their publishing guidelines for scientific manuscripts. Painstakingly, Charles complied with the guidelines, but his response was still rejected; he was not given the privilege of a ...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A Shelby County man and his wife said two doctors amputated the man's penis without his consent, and have filed a lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, Philip Seaton, 61, went to have a circumcision last Octoberas part of treatment for a medical condition. Seaton said when he woke up from the procedure, he realized his penis had been amputated. Seaton has suffered mental anguish, pain, and has lost the enjoyment of life, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in Shelby County court last week against Dr. John Patterson, who performed the procedure, Dr. Oliver James,...

BALTIMORE – A man alleging a Maryland doctor stapled his rectum shut during an operation — causing him to go without defecating for 17 days — took his federal lawsuit to trial Monday in Baltimore. Ronald Watkins, 64, of West Virginia, is suing Manuel Casiano, a doctor in Frederick County, for allegedly botching a 2004 surgery that left Watkins with permanent bowel problems. “The reason for suing Dr. Casiano is very simple: His rectum was stapled shut,” said Julia Lodowski, who with attorney Emily Malarkey is representing Watkins and his wife, Brenda.

After facing a statewide doctor shortage for years, the Texas Medical Board said Monday it issued a record number of medical licenses this past fiscal year. The 3,621 doctors licensed in fiscal 2008 beat last year's record-setting 3,324. The number of licenses issued in the state has jumped almost 44 percent in two years, according to the medical board. The board had grappled with a surge in applications that created a backlog of more than 2,000 applicants seeking a medical license to practice here.

A New Jersey woman has sued her orthopedic surgeon after awakening from surgery to find a temporary tattoo below her panty line. Elizabeth Mateo, of Camden County, N.J., filed her lawsuit Tuesday saying she found "a temporary tattoo of a red rose" below her panty line the morning after her surgery for a herniated disc, her attorney, Gregg A. Shivers, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "She was extremely emotionally upset by it," Shivers told the paper.

AMY FLEDDERMAN's case was never going to be settled out of court, her parents say, because it was never about money. Daniel and Colleen Fledderman, of Newtown Square, Delaware County, decided in 2001 that the doctor who performed the fatal liposuction surgery on their daughter, an 18-year-old Penn State freshman, must be held accountable for her death. And they wanted to warn the public about Dr. Richard Glunk, who they say refused to call an ambulance before it was too late to save her life. Glunk, a board-certified plastic surgeon who has been practicing for 21 years, insists that Fledderman...

snip- For decades, malpractice lawyers and insurers have counseled doctors and hospitals to “deny and defend.” Many still warn clients that any admission of fault, or even expression of regret, is likely to invite litigation and imperil careers. But with providers choking on malpractice costs and consumers demanding action against medical errors, a handful of prominent academic medical centers, like Johns Hopkins and Stanford, are trying a disarming approach. By promptly disclosing medical errors and offering earnest apologies and fair compensation, they hope to restore integrity to dealings with patients, make it easier to learn from mistakes and dilute anger...

-- snip --In 2003 and in 2005, Texas enacted a series of reforms to the state's civil justice system. They are stunning in their success. Texas Medical Liability Trust, one of the largest malpractice insurance companies in the state, has slashed its premiums by 35%, saving doctors some $217 million over four years. There is also a competitive malpractice insurance industry in Texas, with over 30 companies competing for business. This is driving rates down...

CDC Says Problems with Hepatitis C at Clinic Could Be 'Tip of an Iceberg' Posted: 11:10 AM Mar 4, 2008 Last Updated: 2:44 PM Mar 4, 2008 Washington (AP) The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says an outbreak of Hepatitis C at a Nevada clinic may represent “the tip of an iceberg” of safety problems at clinics around the country. The City of Las Vegas shut down the Endoscopy center of Southern Nevada last Friday after state health officials determined that six patients had contracted Hepatitis C because of unsafe practices including clinic staff reusing syringes...

A Toms River pediatrician under investigation for firing a gun in his office surrendered his license to practice medicine while authorities yesterday detailed the serious allegations against him. At its regularly scheduled meeting yesterday in Trenton, the state Board of Medical Examiners approved a consent agreement with Jose Romillo to take his license pending the outcome of the investigation, said Larry DeMarzo, acting director of the state Division of Consumer Affairs. Romillo, who obtained his medical license in 1976, was charged Dec. 31 with firing a handgun sometime in October. From that investigation, state and Ocean County health officials determined...

"Paulo Melo, 29, has been in a coma at the Royal Darwin Hospital for two weeks, after severing his spinal cord in a car crash." - read more below: doctor requested, family objected, court granted

HOUSTON, Oct. 4 — In Texas, it can be a long wait for a doctor: up to six months. That is not for an appointment. That is the time it can take the Texas Medical Board to process applications to practice. 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.

Darrie Eason, a 35-year-old single mother from Long Island, N.Y., underwent a double mastectomy after she was told she had breast cancer. But after the surgery, she learned the unthinkable -- she never had cancer at all. "I remember the words, 'You don't have breast cancer, you never did,'" Eason said today on "Good Morning America." The news was stunning. "I have a philosophy that you have to laugh to keep from crying, so I try to laugh as much as I can," Eason said. A state report blames Eason's mix-up on a former technician at CBLPath lab who mislabeled...

Claiming that Planned Parenthood negligently misdiagnosed her cervical cancer for more than a year, former Planned Parenthood patient Rebecca Glover has filed a medical malpractice suit seeking at least $2 million in damages. Glover’s lawsuit alleges that, after performing a Pap smear, Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties failed to tell her the result: that the test revealed she had cervical cancer. snip Glover’s lawsuit is the second filed against Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties in a month. On June 19, the mother of 21-year-old Edrica Goode of Riverside filed suit against Planned Parenthood after...

The mother of a San Luis Obispo man who died after an attempted organ donation at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center last year claims she never gave hospital officials consent to take her son off life-support and was misinformed when agreeing to the organ harvest, according to a wrongful death lawsuit. Rosa Navarro also alleges in her June 29 civil lawsuit that a transplant surgeon misrepresented himself as her son’s doctor, an allegation the surgeon’s attorney strongly denies. She also said she agreed to the organ donation only because she believed her son had no chance of survival. Defendants in...

(AP) LOS ANGELES 911 tapes reveal callers pleading for help for a woman who lay bleeding on the emergency room floor of an inner-city LA hospital, but they are referred to hospital staff instead.

Los Angeles (AP) -- Federal health officials threatened to cut funding to a troubled hospital after determining it jeopardized the lives of its emergency room patients. Inspectors said Thursday that Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, formerly known as King/Drew, has 23 days to resolve its problems or it would lose its federal funding. They also noted even if the issues are dealt with, the hospital could lose its federal certification because it didn't meet the terms of an agreement with the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The deal called for the hospital to adhere to Medicare's basic standards....

Ten years ago, 19 hospitals in Philadelphia were in the business of delivering babies. Next month, only eight will remain

John Edwards vs. Babies and Moms By Michael Fumento The American Spectator, March 21, 2007 Copyright 2007 The American Spectator John Edwards, being neither a woman nor a racial minority, isn't doing especially well in his campaign to become the Democratic Party's candidate for the U.S. presidency. Alas for him, if he were half as successful in campaigning for America's top job as he was as a trial lawyer, he might be sworn in tomorrow. Edwards won at least 94 cases, according to Lawyers Weekly, of which 54 netted more than $1 million each. Normally attorneys take a 40 percent...

Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer is blasting a new mailer sent to voters by Tan Nguyen, the embattled Orange County congressional candidate linked to a "voter intimidation" letter sent to Latinos. Lockyer's office has been investigating the source of the original letter, which warned "emigrado" not to vote Tuesday. Nguyen supporters said the word refers simply to an immigrant, without connoting legal status, while others said the mailer clearly was an attempt to suppress Latino voter turnout. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called the mailer "racist" and a "hate crime." The new Nguyen mailer, which just landed in the district, claims that Lockyer...

While Texas plaintiffs lawyers have been leaving in droves from nursing-home and medical-malpractice litigation in the wake of tort reform, San Antonio’s Glenn Cunningham is still doing it—albeit with a radically different business model and a much thinner wallet. Before the 2003 changes in state law, Cunningham would round up seven or eight experts, take 15 to 20 depositions and easily spend $85,000 to $100,000 to work up a case. Apparently, the effort persuaded defendants they had problems on the facts and the law, because he often settled for $1 million to $3 million. But with new restrictions on medical-malpractice...