[Steve Eisenberg]

Rendell's proposal would slash doctor payments to the state medical liability fund, and instead have health insurance companies pay for the fund through a one-time "assessment." Insurers haven't said whether they will fight the plan.

It won't work .. not till you do something about all the bad lawsuits being filed

What Fast Eddie is really doing is increasing taxes on insurers, the result being an indirect tax increase, in the form of higher premiums, for every insured person in the state. A few of the poorest who now can barely afford health coverage will drop their insurance.

Is Mol right that "It won't work"? Well, it won't work for me, but it will work acceptably for the doctors and just fine for the lawyers.

[gas_dr]

Greetings from a call-room in Florida where I am a physician. The malpractice crisis is deep and widening. The problem is this -- as I have read through this thread there has been little discussion of what medical malpractice REALLY is. Many have said doctors make errors. Many have said that there are bad doctors, but this does not equal medmal.

In order to be civilly guilty of medical malpractice, the perponderance of the evidence must show that the physician committed the act of NEGLIGENCE, which is to say HE VIOLATED AN ACCEPTED STANDARD OF CARE. An error is NOT a necessarily a violation of the standard of care. Have I made an error in my practice? Sure, medicine is still an art, and that means that things do not always happen as you would hope or necessarily expect.

Like many have suggested, tort reform is an excellent point to begin solve this problem in the free market. Many physicians are being forced to go without insurance, and that is a horrible position for us to be in. We all went in medicine to deal with sick patients and help to remedy their situation, and to touch a life. Nonetheless, on a routine basis, people come to us without insurance, and ROUTINELY receive the best medical care in the world, and then tell us they will not pay us a thing -- it is their right to be treated. But if there is even the least unexpected turn in their care, then we get sued for real damage, punitives, etc.

Finally, the big scare in private practice is currently that the government will nationalize health care. Then you will see the exodus of many fine physicians from our healthcare, and we will have lost the best health care industry in the world.

[Mo1]

Is Mol right that "It won't work"? Well, it won't work for me, but it will work acceptably for the doctors and just fine for the lawyers

Nope .. it won't work for the doctors either, because there are still too many stupid lawsuits out there. The doctors will still pay higher premiums and we will pay even higher premiums

What will happen is neither the doctors nor the patients will be able to afford the insurance anymore .. because the lawyers will end up with all out money

To solve this problem .. they somehow need to figure out which are the legit lawsuits (and there are legit ones) and somehow throw out the bad ones ...