Posted on 01/01/2003 6:49:29 AM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
WEIRTON, W.Va. (AP) - As he stood in a hallway at Weirton Medical Center, Dr. Jayapal Reddy was undecided about whether he would join a mass walkout to protest skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance premiums. But if he does join dozens of fellow surgeons in a strike starting Wednesday, he said it won't be because he is greedy. Reddy, who drives a Subaru with 110,000 miles, said with the rising insurance costs, he must earn $250,000 before seeing $1 in profit.
Reddy is one of dozens of surgeons at four northern West Virginia hospitals who may stop reporting for duty, forcing most elective and trauma surgeries to be diverted to hospitals in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Morgantown. Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, surgeons around the state backed off their threat to close their practices Wednesday just hours before they were scheduled to walk off the job. Strike plans were canceled after Gov.-elect Ed Rendell promised to fight for $220 million in aid for doctors this year. The aid offer is tentative one.
Rendell, a Democrat, doesn't take office for another three weeks and even though he still must persuade a Republican-controlled Legislature to accept his plan, there were signs that the offer had averted a large-scale work stoppage. "We are going to go back to work," said Margo Opsasnick, chief executive at Delta Medix, one of several Scranton surgical groups that had planned to close Jan. 1 because of high insurance costs.
"We are going to take Mr. Rendell's offer as one of good faith, and keep seeing patients," she said Tuesday. Other physician groups around the state followed suit. Scranton's biggest hospital, Community Medical Center, notified state officials Tuesday that its neurosurgeons had also agreed to keep working, avoiding a planned closure of northeast Pennsylvania's only trauma center. "It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off our shoulders," said hospital spokeswoman Jane Gaul.
No such relief came to surgeons in West Virginia. They said they wanted lawmakers to get their message that the state has created a hostile working environment, and doctors are ready to leave. "I'm under contractual obligation to this hospital until September," Reddy said. "I'm already looking around." Dr. Jeffrey Wilps and other surgeons met for more than an hour Tuesday with state insurance officials and concluded, "there's no quick fix to this." "They're just trying to pacify the physicians now. They don't realize it's come to an acute crisis situation," Wilps said. "West Virginia is chasing the doctors - and the businesses in general - out of the state."
Insurance and Retirement Services Director Tom Susman said he tried to head off the strike but found surgeons reluctant to wait for legislative solutions. He returned to Charleston to help the administration finalize contingency plans, which could include rotating doctors from other parts of the state. Lawmakers convene Jan. 8 in Charleston, but surgeons in Weirton said Susman asked them to postpone their walkout until Feb. 1, a delay several found unacceptable. "If we stay silent until Feb. 1, and nothing happens, then they pass us by for another year," said Dr. Samuel Licata, who plans to join the walkout by taking a leave of absence beginning Jan. 6.
Licata, a board-certified general surgeon for seven years, has seen his annual premiums soar from $18,000 to $58,000 without a single lawsuit filed against him. He said surgeons have three critical needs: affordable malpractice insurance; laws that make it harder to sue and cap damage awards; and a reduction in the provider tax, which charges doctors 2 percent of their gross income. "People don't understand. Yes, doctors do make a lot of money. But this isn't about us trying to make more money," Licata said. "It's about trying to keep our heads above water."
gubmint is composed of lawyers, and hires more daily. Law schools are filled to capacity (compared with engineering, etc). Gubmint is where they go to work.
EXCELLENT idea!!!!!
But...sadly...after so MANY years of everyone being taught (and most believing) that the government is the 'bestower of everything'.....it won't happen.
Instead...the Doctors will keep demanding that the Government 'do something'.....when the power to change the situation was in the Dr.'s hands all along.
redrock
p.s....Have a Happy New Year!!
Doctor's don't need aid. They need tort reform. Why should doctors feed lawyer's greed?
Has anybody ever heard of a lawyer being sued for malpractice?
Maybe it's time for socialized "lawyering." If you kill somebody, you can't hire Johnnie Cochran; you get the luck of the draw.
Ooooh...I like.
On the bright side, plenty of good judges and lawyers are getting sick of this type of lawsuit.
Are you trained to do brain surgery?
My uncle has been dead 20 years. He was an anithesiologist (sp?) and I remember hearing him say his malpractice premiums were $100,000. To my knowledge he was never sued. He practiced and taught in a medical school.
His oldest son had a plan, about thirty years ago, to go to law school, then med school and to sue doctors "because that's where the money is."
My cousin graduated from U of Texas law school but even with "pull" wasn't smart enough to get into U of T med school.
He does practice law and he does sue doctors; just wasn't smart enough to be one.
Why? If the trial lawyer on a contingency case loses now, he makes nothing. If we establish a loser pays system, the trial lawyer on a contingency case will still make nothing.
A plaintiff that loses makes nothing in damage awards. An indigent plaintif that loses under the current system will get nothing. An indigent plaintiff that loses under a loser pays system will still get nothong and, being indigent, will pay nothing. You, of course, will probably be required to post twenty or thirty thousand up front to bring a justified suit. Are you, or the indigent, more likely to sufer consequences of loser pays?
My experience is that the financially responisble usually aren't the ones that bring the lawsuits that everyone is complaining about. It's the people with little of nothing to loose that are the problem (look at the 'mcdonalds made me fat' stuff). If all you have is your welfare, or small salary, and less personal property than bankruptcy allows to be siezed (value of home, car, etc that are exempt will vary from State to State), why wouldn't you try to strike it rich by suing to the max for anything you can? And why wouldn't a trial lawyer who thinks you might win (or one who is promoting a cause) take your case?
I don't see anything changing with a loser pays system except denying the successful working class access to the legal system for satisfaction of grievances.
I agree with you, not mc10.
Imagine him in foreign policy. ZERO experience ( flew over the Middle East once)
CiC ? Zero experience( he hasn't even been in charge of a State National Guard as X42 claimed in his 'resume'.
Domestic Issues? unknown
His presidency would be a disaster of ineptness.
I cringe at the possibility.
Socialized medicine would be a more likely solution. Less problem with the constitutional issues.
To those who see socialism as a solution, that is. You, apparently, do. I do not.
In places like West Virginia and Mississippi, verdicts often have little to do with "The Truth". They have to do with how well a lawyer can play the jury just like Johnny Cochran played the O.J. jury.
Such an insurance company would simple go bankrupt the first time a West Virginia jury awarded a $100 million verdict because a trauma surgeon, after doing all he could, failed to save the life of a cute, 24 year old mother of three who arrived in the E.R. with massive head trauma after an 85 MPH car vs. telephone pole motor vehicle accident.
"Look at those three poor, young orphans, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Look at their tears. How they miss their beautiful Mommy! But Mommy will never hold them in her arms again because that man, yes, that man sitting in that chair, let her die in surgery that night!!"
In regards to lobbying, you can rest assured that a healthy chunk of the trial lawyer's share of all outrageous verdicts is contributed to the campaign funds of their lawyer buddies that make up the majority of State Legislatures.
The only way that doctors can fight such a system is simply to call Mayflower Van Lines, move to another state and tell the good citizens of West Virginia, "The next time you need urgent medical care, call your trial lawyer."
What good is making $500K/yr if you're paying $450K/yr just for insurance?
Except for one problem: All the American people ever elect to Congress are trial lawyers.
A few are doing just that, according to a few scattered stories I've read here and there.
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