Posted on 01/16/2003 12:30:10 PM PST by kattracks
1st Add: Includes comments from Alliance of American Insurers)
(CNSNews.com) - President Bush on Thursday called for Congress to pass a law limiting non-economic, punitive damages in medical malpractice suits to $250,000.
"Our medical liability system is broken," the president told a Scranton, Pa. audience.
"A broken system like that first and foremost hurts the patients and the people of America," said Bush, because "junk lawsuits" drive up malpractice insurance premiums and drive innocent doctors out of town, according to the president.
Non-economic damages include jury awards for "pain and suffering," while punitive damages are imposed as a way of punishing a defendant. Defendants can be required to pay non-economic and punitive damages on top of damages for loss of pay, medical expenses and other costs connected to a plaintiff's injury.
\li30\sb30 President Bush's plan would cap recoveries for non-economic damages; reserve punitive damages for cases where they are justified; provide for payments of judgments over time rather than in a single, lump sum; ensure that old cases could not be brought years after an event; reduce the amount doctors must pay if a plaintiff has received other payments from an insurer to compensate for their losses; and would provide that defendants pay judgments in proportion to their fault.
In the American legal system, laws governing civil disputes are usually decided by state legislatures, but Bush said this time the federal government needs to intervene.
"It is a national problem that needs a national solution," said Bush, because the direct cost of malpractice insurance and defensive medicine raises health care costs paid by the federal government though Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' health care and health care afforded to government employees.
The House passed a medical malpractice bill last year but the measure stalled in the Senate. Bush acknowledged that the Senate remains the major stumbling block to reform and urged citizens to lobby their home state senators on the need for damage caps.
The insurance industry is pushing Congress to pass legislation this year.
Rodger S. Lawson, president of the Alliance of American Insurers, urged Congress to enact medical malpractice liability reforms to reduce the number and size of malpractice claims.
\li30\sb30 Lawson called the president's plan a "solid step forward for the American health care system and the American economy."
"Reforming the medical malpractice system is critical, because the rising costs of health care are borne by numerous insurance lines: workers' compensation, automobile, homeowners, etc. All lines share some of the escalating costs," Lawson said. More to Follow...
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The surgeon, of course, should be charged with callous disregard for life and imprisoned. Why punish the rest of society for his negligence?
You're making assumptions. If there's no insurance, if the doctor either quits or goes uncovered, there'll be nothing. Insurance is a risk pool, and as fragile as any patient. Make it too expensive for the market to bear, and there won't be any help for injured patients.
The system needs to be operated with hospitals and doctors on board as well as lawyers. There has to be built into the system arbitration and some common sense, or there will be no system at all shortly.
The fact that Bush said it..or rather 'set' it.
And Bush saying it don't make it so...It'll be fun to watch how many Republicans will be against this one.
Yea, and while you're at it Mr. President how about $250,000 maximum compensation for insurance company CEO's...
What?...
You say it isn't the business of government to regulate CEO compensation...
But you just said...
No it is not. The system is broke, but this is not the fix.
Seems to me we all did fine when hospitals were non-profits, docs lived comfortably and had decent, smaller, personal practices, and Blue Cross operated as a nonprofit entity. Of course, who wants to remember before everybody was insured to the gills and every expense down to the sheets of toilet paper in the hospital room was billed? Where an uninsured man could pay for the entirety of most normal types of care, with a little sacrifice?
Hard costs and fees can easily exceed $250k in what might seem a simple case.
The justice system is already stacked against the small player.
Economic damages can be tough to "prove" in court, the other side will always argue against anything presented and the decision can just as easily go against you.
This is a total sellout to the Insurance and Medical industry, all of whom believe they are entitled.
No.
You find non-economic damages capped, and the ruination of lives, all so middle managers at the docs insurance company can get bigger annual bonuses and golf outings at nicer golf courses.
You obviously did not read carefully enough. The only thing capped would be for non-economic damages, i.e., "pain and suffering","loss of consotium", "mental anguish", etc. In the situation you describe, the doctor should and would be held liable for punitive damages, to punish the act of operating under the influence. You would also be able to recover acutal economic damages, including the cost of caring for that chold for the rest of his/her life.
Just in case you think I don't know what you have gone through: My son suffered a minor stroke when he was six months old. That left him with seizures and some developmental delays but he seemed to be recovering well. When he was a year old, he had a fever and had a really hard seizure. We took him to the ER. While in the ER, he went into an uncontrollable series of seizures lasting 2 hours. They finally had to put him into a medically induced coma to stop the seizures, and life-flight him to the major children's hospital in Houston. There was severe brain damage, and he was left with cerebral palsy and severe mental retardation.
Could we have sued the hospital? Probably. It never even entered my mind. The hospital did everything they could, as far as I could tell. Just because there was a bad outcome did not make it their fault.
Was this your first child? Because the importance of replacing electrolytes in an infant is something I learned with my first child, from my pediatrician. I'm sorry for what happened to your daughter, but if lawyers won't take the case, it is probably because you don't have a case to make...
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