[mountaineer]

Wheeling is a city of about 30,000. The last neurosurgeon left the area over a year ago. Several OB-GYNs have packed up their practices and moved to less litigious markets in recent years. While doctors are leaving town and patients find themselves having to travel one to two hours to visit doctors in Pittsburgh, Columbus or Morgantown, the personal injury lawyers are doing just fine, thank you.

[mountaineer]

fyi

[demkicker]

Maybe Robert Byrd will soon retire, go home, get sick and need a doctor.

[friendly]

West Virginia (#49) and Mississippi (#50) are the poorest, most corrupt, and most 3rd World of all 50 states, yet have many of the richest lawyers. Mississippi judges get huge "loans" and oceanfront condos from the crooked trial lawyers. The attorney industry (read democrat party) basically runs both states as their medieval fiefdoms. (see linked newspaper articles at www.Overlawyered.com )

The physicians have been driven out of business due to massive malpractice premiums they cannot afford. There is no meaningful trauma care in most of both states. The obstetricians in particular have been run out of town by the lawyer industry, becoming economic refugees to other states less benighted than the pathetic, corrupt West Virginia and Mississippi backwater. Healthcare (already the worst of all 50 states) is detreriorating rapidly due to the multi-millionire greed of the shysters.

[FreedomPoster]

Atlas is shrugging.

[coloradan]

There was an article here a few days ago about a thinkly veiled threat from the government to the doctors, don't take time off or bad things might just happen to you. But, alas, Atlas is shrugging anyway.

[Petronski]

It's happening in Pennsylvania too, to put pressure on Rendell to do something. Some of those guys are expected to pay malpractice premiums of $450 per day.

[johnb838]

I'm really getting to hate liberal personal injury/trial lawyers. That and administrative health care insurance people. There aren't too many occupations where I will take a dislike to someone just because of what they do, but these are two examples.

And yes, Virginia, I'm a right-wing hater. (But an equal opportunity hater :)

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

This is what happens when insurance companies and lawyers are calling the shots. Everyone else is shafted.

[cynicom]

The politicians, (mostly lawyers) will do nothing for reform. Doctors are at a crossroad and all the roads lead to the left. Perhaps state governments will be forced to take over the job as insurer. No cost to physicians, you get bad medicine, you sue the state. Also cap the contingency fee at a maximum of ten per cent. The shysters will find someone else to bleed to death.

[Lancey Howard]

Most state and federal legislatures are stocked with scumbag lawyers. I believe one lawyer Senator, John Edwards, used the proceeds from a medical malpractice jackpot to buy himself his Senate seat. So these lawyer-politicos are not about to screw their parasite brethren.
Meanwhile, scumbag Congress can always use Walter Reed for free, so what do they care?

The rest of us can go pound sand.

[DeaconBenjamin]

My solution: Impose a windfall profits tax (50 %) on all attorney fee awards of more than $100,000 where the rate works out to more than $300/hr. Place the funds in a government-operated pool used to replace malpractice insurance for physicians working in communities of 250,000 or below, as well as insurance for local government entities, boy scouts and girl scouts, etc. Oh, and make it retroactive to 1990.

Sure, this is absolutely contrary to the limited government principles I espouse. But I don't see better options available.

[friendly]

bttt for an imporant post.

[jwalsh07]

They're all going to law school.

[Lancey Howard]

Expect to see articles like this from all over the country, week after week after week....

The idea, from the scumbag Democrat point of view, is to leave the staus quo in place for as long as possible. The scumbag lawyers, taking their wink and nod cue from the scumbag Democrats, will continue to relentlessly go after "malpractice" jackpots thereby driving up insurance rates until so many physicians throw in the towel that the sheeple beg for "universal health care".

Clearly, the scumbag Democrats will do nothing but fight tooth and claw against any reform that puts the reigns on their most reliable campaign contributors, the scumbag lawyers. See, the deal is that the scumbag lawyers kick back chunks of their jackpots to the scumbag Democrats in the form of "campaign contributions". Nice little circle jerk they got going there, no?

Meantime, we're screwed.

[Mamzelle]

All the above posts are significant, but I want to note that they all concern themselves with OB and ortho. The article also mentions GS--general surgeons, whose numbers are presently dwindling.

It is the general surgeon who is the de facto trauma surgeon in many communities. That is, you get in a car wreck, he sews you back together.

The article states "our emergency rooms are up and operating." What a laugh. Not to run down the ER docs, but a trauma center does not live up to the name without a general surgeon on call and ready. And those ER docs, without a surgeon handy, are going to get the blame when things don't turn out well, and will be leaving WV, too.

[Kozak]

How dare those quacks do that.
They should be FORCED back to work, shackled if need be,
then SUED!

[yankeedame]

While doctors are leaving town and patients find themselves having to travel one to two hours to visit doctors in Pittsburgh, Columbus or Morgantown, the personal injury lawyers are doing just fine, thank you.

==============

Well, then, that's all that matters, doesn't it?

[Tailback]

Why don't doctors simply refuse to treat lawyers?

[Fred Hayek]

Atlas has Shrugged

[philetus]

Someday, I don't know when or if it will be too late or if it's already too late, but someday ALL the American people will wake up and see what the polititions, lawyers, liberals, elite, etc., have done to our country.

Then again, maybe not.