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."
I'm not as impressed by Rand as Rand was, that's for sure. She didn't have all the answers, but she did have one or two.
Nothing's wrong with that. That is the system we have now. Losing a weak case with no pot of gold produces no contingency fees now, does it? And the lawyer is just as likely to lose his expenses on contingency now as in a loser pays system. What I'm saying, is that where will be no difference, except that you and I, as working people, will no longer have access to the sytem without a large amount of cash up front to guarantee payment of fees in the event of losing. To both your attorney and the opposing attorney.
Remember that a loser pays system wouldn't prohibit, for instance, a judgment against McDonalds for a billion dollares for making people fat. Just that Mcdonalds would have to pay the plaintiffs legal fees as well as their own and that the lawyers would be guaranteed both a percentage of the judgment and actual legal fees as well. The indigent or poor plaintiff would pay nothing, just as he does now.
The solution, if any, lies in the regulation of lawyers through ethical codes and legal fee caps, not loser pays. An attorney would be unlikly to take a weak case and risk losing money if he knew that he would be limited to reasonable legal fees and not 30% or so of millions of dollars in judgment. This would leave the poor and indigent out of the system, though. It wouldn't solve the legal systems problems.
This is almost always the case, no matter where you are. the side that tells the best story (within the law as the Judge allows it) almost always wins. It's usually different on the appeal level, where it is the law and facts of law that count.
False assumption on your part.
The trial lawyers (Hillary) were/are behind the push for socialized medicine. If we have to take the luck of the draw for a brain surgeon or a cardiologist, why not the same for a criminal lawyer?
I think both professions do a poor job of disciplining their own.
When my relative had horrible legal representation, I filed a grievance against the lawyer with the state board. I represented my relative in the hearing and the lawyer showed up with a lawyer.
The lawyer got slapped with a reprimand. I've never read a law book. Says a lot about what's out there practicing law.
This is almost always the case, no matter where you are. the side that tells the best story (within the law as the Judge allows it) almost always wins.
However, the type of jury does have a great impact on the verdict.
The "If it do rhyme, You do no time" style of defense got O.J. acquitted by a downtown Los Angeles jury but would have gotten him sent to the electric chair by a Little Havana jury.
Mississippi and West Virginia have a reputation for having juries made up of low income jurors who pay scant attention to the facts and consider it great fun to hand out multi-million dollar verdicts.
There is no hope that the legal RATS in gummint will ever approve of tort reform, so they may have found a sneaky way to get their health policies passed.
I hate socialism--and lawyers. If the lawyers push for socialized medicine, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
I think lawyers should stay out of medicine, McDonald's, black mold, etc., etc., etc
Yes, we need tort reform. I'd much rather see the surgeon drive a porsche than the lawyer.
You know, I've witnessed one lawyer (a judge, who is a lawyer in a dress) destroy the life of a child in open disobedience to black-letter law. The law said she had a say in her future, but the judge wouldn't even allow her to speak. The child went from an A student on a scholarship track to failing and struggling with Mommy's Boyfriends. This lawyer can't be sued, and the world seems to keep on revolving.
Malpractice insurance was started by docs, did you know that? Because docs know they fail, and they wanted something in place to help the failures. But the system cannot support the lawyer parasites and the injured patients, too. The system cannot sustain verdicts that sound like the Gross National Products of small nations. When the docs work for the government, do you think the lawyers will give a hang? Do you think you'll have any protection?
Wow. That has got to be the cutest little rhetorical sleight of hand I've seen in a long time.
When a plaintiff loses, have you forgotten that a defendant should WIN? Since when does a defendant win under a contingency system? A victorious defendant takes home his legal bills and expenses for his pains. A DEFENDANT ALWAYS LOSES.
That's part of the system that depends on a kind of extortion to operate.
I don't know. You seem to indicate that the dentist made a mistake for not diagnosing a tumor. Is this what the dentist would normally be expected to do? Diagnose a tumor? If so, then I would guess that he would be responsible. But suppose that the doctor had been seen first and he just sent you friend to a dentist for a tooth extraction. suppose that your friend had then later suffered serious complications or had died because the doctor incompetently diagnosed a bad tooth instead of the tumor (which he should have been expected to diagnose). So ... should the Doctor be held responsible? Let's face it, it's not an exact science.
See the point?
As for mistakes, a young woman backed into my truck a few years ago. I had to sue and then have both her and her mothers drivers liscense suspended in order to collect for the damages to my truck. Backing in to my truck was a mistake. Having no insurance was a mistake. I suffered damages to my truck. In my circumstance, would you have just said "oh, it was just a mistake" and paid for the damage yourself?
In my business I carry a great deal of insurance to protect my customers form any 'mistake', even 'Honest mistakes' I might make. Are you suggesting that I shouldn't be held responsible for my mistakes? Mistakes are what we carry insurance for, Either my own general business liability or a Doctors malpractice insurance. Solutions for the problem lie somewhere else than relieving doctors of liability for malpractice. A precise legal definition of what constitutes malpractice would probably help, as it is often a judge or an uninformed jury that makes this determination.
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