Posted on 02/10/2004 3:28:41 AM PST by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - A former North Carolina obstetrician-gynecologist who served as an expert witness and consultant to Sen. John Edwards during his days as a trial lawyer, now accuses the Democratic presidential candidate of increasing the cost of medicine and forcing doctors into retirement in the senator's home state.
"What he has done with those lawsuits is increased the cost of medicine, and he has not changed the practice of medicine in a way that you can see that there are fewer cases of cerebral palsy," William Brannan said in an interview with CNSNews.com.
As CNSNews.com first reported on Jan. 20, Edwards won record jury verdicts and settlements by arguing that in certain cases, obstetricians and the hospitals where they practiced had been responsible for botching the treatment of women in labor and the delivery of their babies.
It was that botched treatment, Edwards argued, that resulted in the infants sustaining either brain damage or developing cerebral palsy, a brain disorder that causes motor function impairment and lifelong disability.
Brannan, the chief medical officer of Mission Hospitals in Asheville, N.C., said he was forced to end his medical practice this year because of skyrocketing medical insurance premiums. Brannan said he consulted for Edwards in an attempt to "bring only the valid cases into the legal system."
Edwards' campaign metaphors about standing up for the poor and underprivileged in the battle between the "two Americas" does not resonate with Brannan.
"I have some argument with [Edwards's] idea that he's out there to help the poor person and that he's out there helping all. No, he was very selective in his case, and went for those that were going to go for large judgments," Brannan said.
"He was not an individual that would go out and help the poor person who needed help in a low-dollar amount. If you look at his cases, they were all high-dollar amount and he didn't work for low-dollar settlements," he added.
Brannan's role as a consultant and sometimes expert witness for Edwards and his legal firm allowed him to see Edwards's career up close.
"He was an expert at getting [cerebral palsy cases] settled without going into the courtroom," Brannan said.
Brannan is very skeptical of Edwards' and other trial lawyers' accomplishments in seeking to blame infant cerebral palsy cases on botched labor and deliveries.
"I don't think that there is a correlation between bad medical practice and the incidence of cerebral palsy," Brannan said.
"Studies that we have done have found no changes in the incidences of cerebral palsy occurring either with increased vigilance...or the increase in C-section rates that have occurred," he said.
Despite the scientific evidence, Brannan is not optimistic that medical malpractice cerebral palsy cases will fade from the courtroom anytime soon.
"Most juries have a live person in the room that they feel sympathy for, and it's very hard to make the cold statistics of a scientific study cancel out the sympathy that they feel," Brannan said.
"So most of juries, knowing that there are insurance policies behind all of these [cases], will then want this family to have something to be able to provide care for the child," he added.
Edwards defends legal career
Edwards has conceded that infant cerebral palsy usually is not the fault of the doctors who deliver the baby -- even though he argued otherwise in his days as a trial lawyer.
According to an article in the New York Times on January 31, "...Mr. Edwards did not dispute the contention...that few cases of cerebral palsy are caused by mishandled deliveries." Edwards did say that during his legal career, he represented only the few cases that were the exceptions to the rule.
Edwards was responding to allegations first reported by CNSNews.com on Jan. 20. The CNSNews.com report noted that a large part of Edwards' legal career was based on "junk science," which he used to win hugely lucrative legal judgments or settlements against the medical profession.
The outcome of those cases, many of them dealing with the debatable cause of cerebral palsy in infants, made Edwards a rich man, allowing him to self-finance a 1998 run for the U.S. Senate from North Carolina and position himself as a presidential candidate in 2004.
The CNSNews.com report pointed to medical studies, dating back to at least the 1980s, which asserted that doctors could do very little to cause cerebral palsy during the birthing process. Two new studies in 2003 further undermined the scientific premise of the high-profile court cases won by Edwards.
Edwards now insists that the cerebral cases he represented were the exceptions.
"I took very seriously our responsibility to determine if our cases were merited," Edwards told the New York Times in the January 30 interview, just days after refusing to answer CNSNews.com's questions on the same topic.
"Before I ever accepted a brain-injured child case, we would spend months investigating it," Edwards added.
The Times article noted that between 1985 and 1995, "Edwards filed at least 20 similar lawsuits against doctors and hospitals in deliveries gone wrong, winning verdicts and settlements of more than $60 million, typically keeping about a third."
'Crisis'
Brannan believes that Edwards did his part to contribute to the American Medical Association's listing of North Carolina as one of the "crisis states" for rising liability insurance.
Many physicians in the state are opting to quit their practices because they cannot afford the insurance premiums, according to Brannan.
The hospital that Brannan now serves as the chief medical officer also has been the target of Edwards and his law firm.
"Our hospital (Mission Hospitals, formerly St Joseph's) had two major suits brought by [Edwards's] law firm -- one of which he was able to prevail and got a judgment, and another one his firm lost," Brannan noted.
Brannan said he personally was forced to stop his Ob/Gyn practice when his insurance premiums shot up.
"My premium two years ago was $44,000 a year, and my insurance carrier notified me that if I wished to continue practicing, it was going up to $68,000 for this year," Brannan said.
"I chose to discontinue my Ob privileges, because I would have to deliver 68 babies just to pay the premium before being able to pay any office expenses." He also said that his premiums were lower than those of many other doctors because of his affiliation with a hospital.
The small practitioners are hit the hardest by rising insurance, Brannan said.
"Liability premiums are the same whether you deliver one baby a year or 300 babies a year," he explained.
"The town of Franklin, North Carolina, lost their sole Ob/Gyn practitioner, so now the women in that town are having to travel over a mountain pass to a neighboring city in order to get obstetrical care," Brannan said.
See Related Articles:
John Edwards Responds to 'Junk Science' Allegations (2/2/2004)
Did 'Junk Science' Make John Edwards Rich? (1/20/2004)
E-mail a news tip to Marc Morano.
Send a Letter to the Editor about this article.
This is one of the ironies of lawyer posturing about the "injured little guy."
And, under an ideal system with a lot fewer lawyers, maybe there could be a kind of "no-fault" designed to compensate patients in a much more modest way for all "adverse outcomes."
Although I don't know how much I'd want to trust to the word of an "expert witness"--also known as "liar for hire."
Eliminate the lawyers, court costs, malpractice awards, et al.; compensate "adverse outcomes" from insurance policies or even taxes; and it would much cheaper, and health care would be affordable. The reason it is not affordable now is because it is a cashcow for lawyers, and they have convinced the public that they are necessary to police the system.
Regardless of what he has done, he has done good for mankind. Edwards and his shyster brethern are the scum of society and to our detriment they gavitate to Washington where the milk is in greater quanities.
There are many bad outcomes that are a matter of hard luck. Not every one comes from error. In the case of these cerebral palsy cases of Edwards , I don't believe any error occurred, just an "adverse outcome." Sympathy for the patient got Edwards his fortune.
You get docs and hospitals too afraid of these adverse outcomes, and you've just done yourself out of some good medical care. If he won't risk his butt, he won't save yours.
I have not had one.
However, if we paid taxes to compensate those who do, or if compensation for iatrogenic injury were part of health care insurance, and if lawyers and malpractice awards were eliminated from the system, we could afford health care and health care insurance; we might be able to afford some sort of national health care insurance. We cannot afford what we have now--nobody can.
Furthermore, if this were optional--i.e. (1) the present system or (2) affordable health care but no option to sue--I for one would take option #2 in a heartbeat.
I have faced the problem of trying to get health insurance for one of my children who is uninsurable because of a pre-existing illness.
We are all forced to pay an army of lawyers to police the system and enormous awards to plaintiffs. This is a de facto tax that I do not want to pay.
Or how about the case where a young man was having a kidney transplant. The young man has a bleeding disorder, marked all over his charts. Regardless, his medical team treats him with an anticoagulant prior to surgery, contraindicated due to his disorder. In the middle of the procedure, when he is bleeding out, a doctor comes out to his mother and asks if he happens to have a bleeding disorder. Ooops (he died in surgery).
Or the case of an 18 month baby with severe burns, who fails to receive the proper treatment because the hospital's burn doctor and the pediatrian get into a pissing match.
I have handled dozens of medmal cases on both sides of the bar. There are cases which are the result of an adverse outcome...medicine is as much an art as a science. But there are also cases of negligence, where the outcome was due to the poor care rendered by the medical system.
Also, the "runaway jury" is a complete myth. There are bad jurisdictions, of course. There are always bad verdicts, going both ways. But in the end, the system balances itself out (the public has no idea what goes on behind the scenes).
The law allows a person who has sustained an injury to go before a jury of his peers for compensation. It has been done like this for hundreds of years.
Moreover, the insurance companies have already stated, flat out, that caps on damages will not reduce premiums.
However I don't want to pay for the compensation, and I don't want to be forced to pay for the compensation, especially when it means that I cannot afford health care for myself and my family, which it does.
It's also terrible if someone is struck by lightening, or injured by a burgler, or born with a birth defect. It would be wonderful if we could compensate all these people for their suffering, but we obviously cannot afford to.
We obviously cannot afford to compensate the people you described either. It means that, if we do, we cannot afford health care. And that's the way the present situation is.
In the end, the system does not balance itself out. I cannot afford health care. No one can.
If court costs, attorneys' compensation, and unlimited awards to plaintiffs were eliminated, we could afford health care. It's that simple.
The fact that it's been done like this for hundreds of years is a fallacy of logic. The present situation is unique in history.
Limitations on costs--whether it be caps on damages or whatever--that make it possible for insurances companies and health care providers to predict costs with some degree of accuracy will obviously make the system manageable, and, once manageable, its affordability can be calculated.
All we know now is that it is out of control, costs are unlimited, and no one can afford it.
So have I--and, ironically, he's as healthy as a horse. All I did was have some tests run on him as a baby--now he's uninsurable through a lifetime.
I've been told by lawyers on FR that I'm supposed to hate the insurance companies and the medical field for this problem--
What I'm also afraid of is that the insurance I now have is going to collapse, give up, and go out of business.
Talk to the average doc about socialized medicine and they'll shrug listlessly--"Bring it on. At least I'll get sick leave."
And how many of them voted for Democrats? The party of trial lawyers will keep getting those votes.
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