A little malpractice primer from NYTimes

[spanone]

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Malpractice Myths
By BOB HERBERT

Published: June 21, 2004
he power brokers obsessed with tort reform really have the jargon down. They travel the country with overheated stories about runaway juries and jackpot justice. The way they tell it, sinister lawyers and opportunistic plaintiffs are on the hunt, preying on virtuous corporations, hospitals and doctors in search of that big payout from the lawsuit lottery.

President Bush has been complaining about "junk and frivolous" lawsuits for years. So it's interesting to hear the following from the Center for Justice and Democracy, a consumer advocacy group:

"It may be hard to understand why `tort reform' is even on the national agenda at a time when insurance industry profits are booming, tort filings are declining, only 2 percent of injured people sue for compensation, punitive damages are rarely awarded, liability insurance costs for businesses are minuscule, medical malpractice insurance and claims are both less than 1 percent of all health care costs in America, and premium-gouging underwriting practices of the insurance industry have been widely exposed."

In looking at medical malpractice cases, I've been amazed by the cold-blooded attitude so many people have taken toward patients who have been seriously, and sometimes grotesquely, harmed. Referring to a Wisconsin woman who had both of her breasts removed after a laboratory mix-up mistakenly indicated she had cancer, a doctor from South Carolina told a Congressional subcommittee:

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Before the admin or mod tells you, you'll need to edit it down

to a paragraph or two, and include a link to the article.

Good editorial, though.

[LittleApple81]

2. First, you should clean up your post: too many blank lines and

unnecessary things that appear on the page but can be deleted. And don't you have too much of the article copied to your post?

Second, THANKS. a very good article.

[wurzel]

3. Most people don't understand why juries act as they do.

As it was explained to me. In a civil court proceeding the guilty cannot be imprisoned or fined by the government. Their only punishment will be financial. In a non-class action suit the only way the jury can punish the guilty is by fining them a huge amount of money. Usually they do this by calculating the amount of money the Corporation saved by ignoring the problem. The only thing a jury can do with that money is to award it to the one plaintive. They can't share among people who didn't sue. That is why you get these seemingly overboard settlements for individuals.

[Moderator]

4. spanone

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
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