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What do you think about medical malpractice awards?
Question : What do you think about medical malpractice awards?
“There is now a great controversy over the amount monetary awards granted to plaintiffs in malpractice lawsuits brought against doctors and other medical personnel by patients.”
Some awards, for instance, go into the millions. Do you feel that such rewards are too much? Do you believe that there should be a limit on the amount of money that can be awarded, and why or why not?
medical malpractice
Best answer:
Answer by sgoldperson
Yes we need Tort reform. First some malpractice is B.S. and costs the Doctors money because malpractice insurance. They have to defend against cases that aren’t really malpractice. If we put a board in place that would determine if it was REALLY malpractice or not before any money could be awarded(or even go to trial) that would be a good start. I like the idea of a Doctor, a Lawyer, and a layman run a 3 man board and 2 or 3 have to decide it was really malpractice. Maybe a larger board, but still take a majority to decide that it was really a case where the doctor committed malpractice. I also favor putting guidelines in place about how much can be made. If the doctor left a sponge in someone and just had to make an incision to remove it then they don’t deserve millions. If the doctor cut off the wrong leg then they deserve a lot of money. It’s a question of how much did it really effect their quality of life.
No.
The reality is that the publicity about medical malpractice has been a disservice to many patients and probably been bad for health care.
According to a peer-reviewed study by (I think Harvard Medical School), fewer than 5% of victims of malpractice act on a claim. The few that do must find a doctor familiar with the area of practice in the community to review the claim and say that it has merit before they can even go forward. This is really hard, even for the best claim, and the money outlay is significant. Then they have to get through aggressive discovery by the insurance company, which can look into every aspect of the patient’s life. Then they have to get past an opportunity for the Judge to throw it out. Then they have to prove to a jury of usually 12 people that they were harmed by negligence, and they must prove damages. They don’t get anything for attorneys’ fees unless they show the doctor was reckless or malicious. If the jury makes an award, which more than half don’t, the Judge can reduce the award, but not increase it, or disregard the jury and throw it out. Then they have to survive one or two appeals.
Nobody knows how much the malpractice insurers are making, and they have a bizarre exemption from the antitrust laws that normally prohibit price fixing. Premiums have gone up, while claims and awards have gone down. “Defensive medicine” only seems to be practiced on people who can pay, so there is some doubt that liability is a cause rather than a pretext for the providers to make more money.
Contrary to suspicion you may have, I am not a malpractice lawyer. I have never handled a Plaintiff’s malpractice claim, although I occasionally work for doctors. I am a lawyer by profession, but I work more as an economist. I started off believing that we have a problem with malpractice claims, delved into it, and changed my opinion 180 degrees. Problem in our society is that there is no PR campaign for people hurt by occasional careless doctors or hospitals.