Posted on 12/15/2007 1:46:38 PM PST by Graybeard58
Ambulance chasers rejoice! If you don't already have a BMW for every day of the week, you can buy one now. If you only have an 80-foot yacht, you'll soon be able to afford a 200-footer. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has given you a bonanza.
Dr. Roland Florio was treating David Sacca, 75, for emphysema, hypertension and lung cancer. As part of Mr. Sacca's treatment, Dr. Florio prescribed oxycodone, Zaroxolyn, prednisone, Flomax, potassium, Plaxil, oxazepam and fursemide. A common side effect of several of the drugs is drowsiness, and on March 22, 2002, Sacca passed out while driving and struck and killed Kevin Coombes, 10, who was standing on a sidewalk with a friend.
Kevin's mother sued Mr. Sacca and Dr. Florio. A lower court threw out the case, but on Tuesday, the Supreme Judicial Court said the case could proceed to trial, leaving it up to lawyers and juries to decide whether a physician is liable for injuries suffered by someone he never saw. Justice Roderick L. Ireland, author of the lead opinion, compared doctors to bartenders who can be held liable for injuries caused by their customers.
That's a false analogy. Bartenders serve recreational products, watch their customers consume it and can cut them off at any time without affecting their customer's health. Doctor prescribes medicines essential to the preservation of their patients' life and health, nearly always aren't present when the drugs is taken and can cut off treatment only at their patients' risk.
In addition, unlike alcohol, prescription drugs come with copious written warnings, usually with stickers attached to the pill bottles and with detailed sheets listing possible side effects. Further, Mr. Sacca had been on the medications for months before the accident without serious side effects.
Said Dr. Dale Magee, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society: "This is one more straw on the backs of practicing physicians who feel the liability challenges out there are being broadened. Now they're being held responsible for things that happen beyond the physician-patient relationship." Added Reni Gertner, editor of the Massachusetts Medical Law Report: "Absolutely the case has precedent-setting value."
Now that the courts want to hold deep-pocketed doctors responsible for what happens to people they've never met or treated, the only limit to their potential liability is the imagination of trial lawyers who have renewed incentive to chase every ambulance. And next time your health insurance co-pay goes up or you find the specialist you hoped to consult isn't taking new patients, thank the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and its hideous decision.
Contrary to common belief, doctors are not usually the “deep pockets”. It’s the malpractice insurers - to whom doctors pay insanely high premiums - whom the plaintiff’s attorneys rip off by the jury system. The insurance carriers simply pass on the charges to the doctor-insurees, until they can’t afford it any more and have to change their practices or leave the profession entirely.
Our judicial system is crap and needs a complete overhaul.
Leave the lawyers out of the room when performing it, too.
“The docs can stay in the state, and raise their rates 300%...”
If it were only that easy. Reimbursement rates are predetermined almost entirely by the federal government, via the largest payer in the mix, Medicare. In fact, if you dig a little closer, you will see that health care is about to come to a standstill as Medicare is planning to cut reimbursement rates 10.1% in January. They were already at 1993 levels.
Nope, Doctors long ago abrogated their ability to determine financial outcomes, short of effectively choosing not to practice. The legal system very much intends to continue to whittle away at the profession.
Overall, this is one of the painful open sores in the crises of traditional American values: Ignorance and victimhood vs. responsibility and honor (both of which are revealed through transcendence). A gambler would bet against their return.
Madness.
I bet this same woman complains to her doctor about the bad taste of her suppositories.
Congratulations to you and the wife.
The little angel must be sleeping if you’re posting!
Congratulations!! :-) Any pics?
Is that a true story? Good Lord that’s hilarious.
True story, told to me by the physician.
too funny, too funny
Either the physicians in Mass must organize—like a union—or leave the state. I remember when the trauma surgeons in Las Vegas resigned en masse because they could not afford the insurance.
Took a call from a patient who had been prescribed the BC patch. She was calling in because the patch was painful to remove. I conferenced her in with a pharmacist, and stayed on the line (company policy in case she needed assistance after the consult). Thank goodness for the mute button. If the medication in the patch didn't prevent pregnancy, the location of the patch would. It was pulling short hairs when she removed it.
Ha! the chastity patch
Although doctors are NOT monolithic on social issues, the New England Journal of Medicine published by Harvard is a hard left propaganda organ for socialism whenever it strays into social issues. Plus MA is a hotbed of statism. it is 180 degrees away from what it was 231 years ago. In a sense by pushing socialism and statism every chance they get, the "leaders" of MA's biomedical hegemony have brought this on themselves, but it may be what they want.
There is a third alternative to the two you mentioned and that is total socialized medicine. Where physicians are employees of the state, and only those patients who are approved by the state get treated, and only those treatment that meet state approved guidelines are used. This is what liberal politicians want. Not only total finanical power over the serfs, but literally the power of life and death.
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