VA: Frivolous Lawsuits Are Scaring Away Good Doctors
Jun 29th, 2007
(11 votes, average: 3.27 out of 5)
Loading ...A good 10 years ago, I had surgery. Without divulging too much information, let’s just say I was particularly nervous about the procedure I was undertaking. So as I was […]
Original post: Frivolous Lawsuits Are Scaring Away Good Doctors
Yeah, I know just what you mean. Personally I agree that there are definitely times when lawsuits are justified. My girlfriend was on a school trip and her mom was one of the chaperons. Well, something happened and somehow one of her ovaries started twisting while on the trip. They stopped at the hospital that is about 2 blocks away from me during the brief time I live at my parents house during the summer. Unfortunately, the doctors in the ER didn’t give a shit and thought she was just seeking drugs. So instead of running some tests like they should have considering as she was in so much pain, they basically just kicked her out. So they continue home which was another 4 hours away and she has STILL not gotten any better. By the time they got to a hospital there, they had to do surgery and remove the thing. Had they caught it at the first hospital there probably would have been very little to no damage. As if that is not bad enough, when they requested the records from said hospital, they didn’t get them. They got a middle eastern dude’s testicle cat scan records. WTF? As if it was not obvious enough that they were the wrong records because the names were nothing similar, they were polar opposites! Different races, genders, ages, etc! Can anyone say breech of medical privacy? So sometimes lawsuits are good, but overall people would rather sue because they have a scar 1 cm longer than the doctor predicted. Deal people, unless you really have a good reason. Oh yeah, and instead of running the doctors off, lets run all the Ambulance chasing lawyers out!
Its not just frivolous lawsuits driving away good doctors, but the health care system in the U.S. in general. The insurance, the lack of ability to do anything without doing a cross-benefit analysis, the bureaucracy, and the general profit-driven goals of the health-care industry turns medical practices into business practices. Instead of a doctor concentrating on healing people, he’s concentrating on money, and if he heals one person, would he be able to afford to heal another. I would say doctors fear a lost of money more than malpractice itself (although malpractice usually leads to a lost in money).
Really, its hard to believe that people are still swallowing that old ‘frivolous lawsuits are driving up malpractice insurance. It never occurred to you that the people selling this story are perhaps trying to mislead you. Try educating yourself on the topic before continuing to spread this tripe. You could start here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_02/008311.php
Doctors? Would someone inform me as to what that means?
lee - maybe its true that insurance rates just increased across the board and lawsuits weren’t the largest contribution to the increase in malpractice insurance (i’m not an economist so I can’t really say). nonetheless, frivolous lawsuits greatly impact the medical community. from having doctors shy away from fields such as obstetrics, to demoralizing good doctors who don’t really deserve to be sued, they certainly leave their mark. like v said, some people can’t accept that illness happens and can’t always be stopped, and place blame on doctors. since a lot of doctors try to avoid going to court because of the legal fees, they have to end up settling outside, no matter how baseless the claim is. thus, frivolous lawsuits do have a negative impact, and that’s not “tripe.”
#3 Thanks for the legalistic propaganda. It’s not the premiums, you moron. It’s two weeks sitting my ass in a courtroom or in depositions when I could be working and having to pay office staff to twiddle their thumbs. Every day out of the office sitting in a court room costs a doctor thousands of dollars.
And it would be one thing if juries had brains. The average jury thinks at a sixth grade level. An unemployed janitor is going to decide if I properly treated someone medically? It is supposed to be a jury of one’s peers not a jury of morons. Letting smart eight graders on a jury would be an upgrade.
The real issue with me and medicine though is not just law suits but time. Patients want to talk with their doctors, but for most, having to pay for that time, well that’s someone else’s job. Every day, I am confronted with the liability-asshole issue. Want a free refill on a medicine? If I fill it, I am liable for it. If I don’t, I am an asshole. And how much do I get paid for this dilemma? Nothing. Instead of thinking your doctor is an asshole for not doing free labor, here is a novel idea, pay him for his time.
Now before anyone comes after me for complaining, let me point out to you why you want your doctor to be well paid and well treated. Why? If you are not paying him or treating him well, he is going to make his money by aligning himself with someone who does: a drug company, a hospital, an insurer, or another set of doctors. And he is going to be more loyal to his payor source than you. I would much rather lose you as a patient than have an insurer up my ass.
I had a couple hundred diabetics at one time in my practice, and at the time, there were two basic pill types for diabetes. One set of pills were cheaper, had more severe side effects, and caused weight gain. The other had less side effects, didn’t cause weight gain but was 10X the price. In the beginning, I used the more expensive pill but the insurers were up my ass about drug costs.
When one of my patients was griping about paying $10 more on a copay, I lost it. I was asking an insurance company to give up hundreds of thousands in drug costs and this prick was bitching about $10. From that day forward, I realized that people got what they paid for and prescribed the cheaper pill for HMO patients.
Hey, no one was going to sue me if you got fat on the cheap diabetic pill. If you gained weight, you needed to go to the gym and eat less, lard ass. I was the only one who knew what really caused the weight gain.
And no lawyer, no doctor, no one in the press, nor state agency is going to say I screwed you over. What I did was appropriate medicine; it was just not the best medicine.
Do you want a doctor to do what is best for you? Then pay him. If there is any job that requires labor on his part, then pay him. Ultimately, you will benefit. What is driving up his costs and forcing him to charge more isn’t your care. It is the government wanting him to be their cop, the hospital requiring him to take freebies, the insurer wanting him to save them pennies, and lawyers forcing him to testify. Get those people off his ass.
All those parties are in the medical business for themselves and not for you. They are scaring the shit out of you when you see a doctor. They want you to believe that if not for them, medical care would totally stink.
Quit relying on all these other parties to decide what is best for you.
Studies have shown the typical patient is so moronic he will change doctors for a $10 discount. Don’t be a moron. Find a doctor you are comfortable with and stick with him. In the long run, the most cost effective and best medical care for you is for you to find a doctor you trust and sticking with him.
I agree that good, communicative and caring doctors are ard to find.
I also agree that people who file frivilous law suits impact the practise of medicine way too much.
I also think that patients who are harmed by misdiagnoses and surgical errors must have the right to recourse - bad doctors and inept technicians have to be excised from the system at some point.
And while I also agree that healthcare costs are very high, I certainly want god medical care when I need it! I’m grateful that I can afford health insurance!
The real tragedy is that during the last six years the number of uninsured ***children*** in the United States has increased by 30 percent. There’s certainly something very wrong with our leadership and elected officials if that cannot be reversed - and soon!
Another real tragedy is the medical debacle that veterans face on a daily basis: they put their lives on the line in the service of our country and deserve far better than they’ve gotten during the last 20 years. A verteran injured on the battlefield should have the ability to walk into *ANY* hospital and get *ANY* care he or she requires. The red tape vets have to go through is ghastly - and unwarranted. Getting pre-approval for a surgical procedure with any HMO is a walk in the park compared to what these folks have to go through. It’s a stinking dirty shame that vets are treated this way. Dirty. Stinking. Shame.
“All those parties are in the medical business for themselves and not for you.”
That’s really what it boils down to on what’s causing health care costs to rise. However, the government shouldn’t be in the health care business category (whether politicians are or not is another story…), and the hospitals requiring freebies should be subsidized by said government. Its good that good doctors are paid, and that people should pay them to avoid them being ‘bought’, but how well would the average citizen be able to pay a doctor compared to a pharmaceutical company?
That said, “Sicko” is an interesting movie. =)
re: docjoe999
You could have talked with your patients, give them the choice, cheap drug or expensive drug with less side effects. Then they get what they want: the side effects might not be worth 10 bucks to some. It sounded from your post like you never considered they might not want you to make that choice for them. Parental doctors is an old part of medical culture that needs changing.
Supply and demand. We need more doctors so competition gets to work.
Indeed, the “frivolous law suits are driving up the cost of insurance and forcing doctors out of the business” is, to a large extent, insurance industry propaganda. V missed on this one.
That’s not to say that there aren’t frivolous malpractice suite; there certainly are, but most never make it to trial, and many are dismissed on preliminary motions.
But there are several studies that have shown that even where tort reform has been enacted, such as California, malpractice insurance rates have either not dropped, or have by a very small percentage and then crept back up again.
Other studies have demonstrated that what the insurance industry fears most–very large damage awards–are real but infrequent and many can be traced to a small number of doctors who have had multiple malpractice suits and who have rarely been disciplined by state medical boards. This is one area that gets scant attention in the debate: if state boards would do a better job of investigating complaints and taking action against the few doctors that are practicing bad medicine, there would be fewer large damage awards.
But the bottom line is that insurance companies make a great deal of money out of large premiums and have had little to no incentive to reduce them.
Unfortunately, there is actual malpractice out there, and patients that are harmed should have a process of redress.
And, docjoe999, with the attitude you seem to have for your patients, you might want to think about getting into another line of work…maybe auto mechanic. You want to be well-paid and well-respected but your post evidences nothing but contempt for those who you think should pay you lavishly and shower you with praise and respect. With that attitude toward medicine and your patients, it’s no wonder that, as your post seems to imply, you’ve been in court more than you’d like.
DocJoe has the most horrifying attitude towards practicing medicine that I have seen in a long time. Of course, it is understandable that doctors provide a very important service to society and should be compensated - but being disrespectful to people because they “aren’t bothering to pay you enough” is simply ridiculous. Being a twenty-something year old, the majority of my friends don’t have health insurance. My best friend just got a job that has benefits and it’s one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to her professionally. However, this isn’t to say that we aren’t WILLING to pay for medical care - the simply fact of the matter is that we can’t. We aren’t lazy or cheap. We all work hard and have the best jobs that we can. Some of us have associates or bachelors degrees. That being said, among my circle of friends, one person has decent health insurance. I have health insurance - I pay 90 dollars every two months for insurance that pretty much covers me having something horrible happen to me - no doctor visits, no prescriptions. It kind of sucks :P
I’m just saying that while some people might take advantage of the system, some of us are actually trying to get by the old fashioned way. Maybe DocJoe could consider that next time he’s handing out crappy medicine and blaming his patients for it.
Aside from that little rant - the health insurance/care system is pretty messed up and I think that everyone had good points about why or why not. I don’t really know any of the answers, but I certainly don’t want to be blamed solely for the fact that I can’t always afford to go to the doctor or buy the prescriptions they provide me.
Regarding the currently inability to cope with tragedy, I’d like to go ahead an point the finger at the media, as much as I hate to. But consider the end of almost any popular movie of the last half century to the end of most Shakespeare plays. Nobody dies anymore! Not without some kind of happy resolution. “Hamlet” ends with everybody dying. And you deal with it.
I wonder what V’s surgery was for? Genital reassignment? Removal of a genital wart? Female circumcision?
Olb, the government does a better job providing health insurance than private insurers. Overhead costs for Medicare are 3% versus 20% for the private sector. The easiest way to get everyone insured is to just extend Medicare to everyone.
Sarah, your post is pathetic. It is one reason I chose to care mostly for the elderly. Instead of getting mad at me for wanting to get paid for services, you should get mad at a government taking money out of your paycheck to pay for the insurance of seniors many of whom are rich. On top of that, your generation thinks nothing of spending $5000 on a boob job but balks at a $50 office visit.
Grow up. Quit calling doctors assholes because they won’t work for you for free. The least you could do if you don’t have money to pay them is offer some type of a service to them.
#9 and 10, One of you writes that we need more doctors and the other writes that I should be an auto mechanic. Your posts show me how schizophrenic the public is with regards to doctors.
#9, the laws of supply and demand only work when prices aren’t fixed. Prices are fixed by the government, and insurers follow the government’s lead. Where there are more doctors, health care costs are higher not lower.
#10 “You want to be well-paid and well-respected but your post evidences nothing but contempt for those who you think should pay you lavishly and shower you with praise and respect.”
Right, nobody has a problem with doctors other than me. Your use of the word “you” shows me how clueless you are. Most doctors get paid much more from insurers than patients. To be well respected and paid by insurers, a doctor has to keep costs as low as possible often neglecting what is best for the patient as in my example.
And yes, I do have contempt for patients who are too dumb to realize this. If you want your doctor to do what is best for you, you need to pay him yourself.
I have absolutely no problem compensating doctors for their services. I’d gladly pay good money to be well taken care of - to the best of my ability. However, not everyone is in the same position to just let their bank account take a huge hit every time they get sick. It’s too easy to simply blame people for not paying their doctors enough when a lot of times it just isn’t a realistic option. It seems to me that doctors aren’t really the issue at all, it’s the way the health care system is set up that leads to these problems.
I don’t have contempt for doctors. My doctor is totally awesome and I think she’s a great person. And I’m certainly not mad at you, Doc Joe, for wanting to be paid. I have a job too, and I also expect to be compensated for the work I do. My only problem with almost everything you said is that it was mean spirited and offensive - and I felt that you were looking down on people for not paying you enough money.
If you are a good doctor DocJoe, which from the sounds of it you feel that you are, then I would gladly pay you whatever I could afford to take advantage of your services. I would just ask that you keep in mind that not all of us can afford to pay you as well as you might like. Perhaps that means that we can’t come to you for health care, but it most definitely isn’t a situation of our own choosing - we’d probably love to make lots of money and give some of it to you when we’re sick.
How does not having the means to pay you ourselves for good service make us dumb? I might be well aware of the fact that paying you more might result in better service, but that doesn’t necessarily make me capable of doing it. All I want is to be healthy and have my doctor care about my well being, and I don’t feel like that is entirely too much to ask.
“And, docjoe999, with the attitude you seem to have for your patients, you might want to think about getting into another line of work…maybe auto mechanic.”
You sure you want this guy working on your car? He’d be the one charging you five hundred dollars for a new alternator when all he did was replace the belt.
We need to be able to sue doctors because there’s no other way to hold them accountable. We’d like to think most of them are in the business to help people, but they aren’t saints any more than auto mechanics are. Doctors are in it for the money, just like everybody else.
Frivolous lawsuits are indeed a problem, and not only in medicine. The solution is not to prevent all lawsuits - making doctors completely unaccountable. How about punishing people who file frivolous suits? By which I mean, the lawyers that represent them - the litigants don’t usually have any money to take, although they might have a kidney or two worth extracting.
The main cause of frivolous lawsuits, however, is not greed. It’s people who have colossal medical bills and no means of payment. The only way they can avoid donating their house to the hospital is to make someone’s insurance company cough up. And it isn’t just people without insurance - even “good” insurance is usually inadequate when something really bad happens, let alone an HMO or Medicaid. Insurance companies will do everything they can to wriggle out of paying your bills, and they leave themselves plenty of loopholes to do so.
Can you really blame their victims for trying to make them (or some other insuror) pay up at the other end of the pipe? You can’t sue an insurance company with any prospect of winning, but you can sue a doctor, and his insuror WILL pay.