Medical Liability Crisis - North Florida Surgeons' Press Release

Press release, North Florida Surgeons ^ | May 8th, 2003 | North Florida Surgeons

[friendly]

good night bump

[ccmay]

Many states require malpractice insurance as a condition of licensure. And almost all hospitals require it as a condition of staff membership.

I don't see how a whole state (much less an individual hospital) could resist a massive, coordinated refusal to carry malpractice insurance by even half its physicians.

A less satisfactory solution would be to carry the minimum allowable, and contribute any money saved to a legal defense fund to fight the trial lawyers on every single case. I think carrying a gold-plated malpractice policy just makes you that much fatter a target for the ambulance chasers.

-ccm

[ccmay]

Many states require malpractice insurance as a condition of licensure. And almost all hospitals require it as a condition of staff membership.

I don't see how a whole state (much less an individual hospital) could resist a massive, coordinated refusal to carry malpractice insurance by even half its physicians.

A less satisfactory solution would be to carry the minimum allowable, and contribute any money saved to a legal defense fund to fight the trial lawyers on every single case, regardless of the merits. I think carrying a gold-plated malpractice policy just makes you that much fatter a target for the ambulance chasers.

-ccm

[ccmay]

I was recently talking to a retired IRS Special Agent. He told me the very first person he visited as an Agent was a Woman Dr. who was making over a million a year. Her husband was also a Dr. and he was also making over a million and this was over 20 years ago. . . Many doctors are simply making a killing.

Oh that's cute. A single, second-hand anecdote from twenty years ago, and you feel justified in slamming doctors for "making a killing."

Let me be the first to inform you, Mr. Van Winkle, that in those twenty years, we have seen the rise of HMO's, whose very reason for existence is to cut payments to doctors. We have seen slashing cuts in Medicare and Medicad payments. We have seen vast increases in frivolous lawsuits and a corresponding increase in malpractice insurance.

A doctor making a million dollars a year is a distinct rarity. Practically all of them are plastic surgeons etc. who do elective procedures and insist on being paid up front, cash or credit card. This was true twenty years ago and remains true today.

Or perhaps they were crooks. Maybe that is why your IRS agent was investigating them.

In any case, it is certain that there are orders of magnitude more physicians earning less than $100,000 than those earning $1 million. Pediatricians and family doctors, the front line foot soldiers of medicine, have been particularly hard hit by all the cuts. Most of them would have been far better off financially, when you consider all their uncompensated years of training, if they had taken an apprenticeship in plumbing.

-ccm

[Taliesan]

There is no mystery. The average income for a pediatrician is about $110,000. Family practice, slightly higher. Surgeons make more: average for an orthopedic surgeon is about $370,000. Spine surgeons more. Heart and brain surgeons probably average between 500k and a million.

What should they make? What does the typical malpractice attorney make in a year, and how does the training compare? Who does the most good?