Mr. President. Read MY lips about the truth of healthcare lawsuits:

[Deja Q]

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/10574659.htm?1c

"What I'm here to do is say as clearly as I can - the United States Congress needs to pass real medical liability reform this year," Bush said.

Mr. President. Now it's time for one of your subjects... well, one of them who has a brain, anyway... to say something as clearly as I can: If you get people who know how to practice medicine, you will have fewer people filing lawsuits because they got screwed by some goddamn quack.

Medicine isn't, contrary to popular belief (faith), a by-the-book, paint-by-numbers snake-oil dime-a-dozen job. It takes skill and talent. REAL SKILL. REAL TALENT. It is not like fixing a car or greeting people at Wal-Mart. THAT is why doctors make good money, Mr. President. And THAT is why they're supposed to take the risks. Yes, accidents happen. But in my own experience, I have dealt with many who do not go through half the tests they ought to. They readily dismiss me as having a mental or emotional disorder. I have fought sheer idiots in the medical field many times, and have only recently found somebody who is worth the money he earns.

I am disgusted, Mr. President. In an industry that is corrupted by greed and quick to judge. Quick to dismiss. Quick to ignore. Quick to act like second rate gods and expects not to get just due recourse when they make willful errors.

And I am disgusted with anybody who prefers to think that shooting the injured patients is going to do more to fix the problem than getting some QUALIFIED PEOPLE into the damn industry, which would do far, far more to solve the REAL problems at hand. Please come back down to planet Earth and see for yourself how illogical your rhetoric is.


On edit: Spelling.

On edit 2: Grammar.

[Jacobin]

1. Over half the lawsuit are caused by a very small minority of

practitioners.

It is extremely difficult to win a med malpractice case. It's almost impossible to find a doctor to testify against another doctor.

Putting caps on awards will only make it harder to find a lawyer to slog through the courts, pay outrageous fees to expert witnesses and likely lose, and will punish those who are truly maimed by bad doctors.

Caps are not the answer.

[MSgt213]

2. All this bullshit about frivolous suits is just that. Bullshit. First of

who decides what's frivolous in the first place? That's what lawyers get paid to argue and judges get paid to decide. The whole scam here is to stop awards not lawsuits. Its just that simple.

[Deja Q]

6. Not as much 'awards' as 'justice'. Using the few who try to screw to

kill it for everybody else.

And, go figure, only the nutty stuff gets aired on the M$M - which in turn riles them asses (oops, the masses) into happy conformity.

Very nimble, that.

[Robbien]

3. With the FDA now working for and getting paid by drug companies

and Congress working for and getting paid by drug companies, the only body working for the average American is the tort lawyers.

[Deja Q]

4. And with the FDA (Fascist Drug Administration) promoting pills everywhere

instead of redirecting society to something that's a little more HEALTHY on a core level.

I'm disgusted.

[Iris]

5. And it might also help to get the HMOs out of the picture.

[GarySeven]

7. There is NO SUCH THING as a "frivolous" medical malpractice suit

Judges regularly declare lawsuits "frivolous" if they have no legal basis - in fact, lawyers who file them (or prisoners filing pro se) are regularly sanctioned by courts.

"Frivolous" is actually a term of art used by defendants to challenge a lawsuit, not in a court of law but in a court of public opinion. By any real measure ANY lawsuit that survives the initial challenges to evidence and cause of action is NOT frivolous; the process has determined that whatever the plaintiff claims to have happened deserves at least a hearing before a jury. The process itself weeds out "frivolous" matters, or, alternately, shows the defense that the evidence is so strong they will certainly face a large judgment and should settle with the plaintiff.

I notice that in all the Bush Administration's claims about "frivolous medical malpractice cases" they never cite ONE example of such a case. In point of fact there CAN NEVER BE a "frivolous" malpractice claim because those actions are among the most complex to try in court. NO lawyer would ever take a malpractice case unless he were CERTAIN he had more than a 50 percent chance of winning. To prove med mal, you must show that the health care provider did not follow what the medical establishment itself has determined to be a proper course of care. To do that, a lawyer must get other doctors to tell a jury what that proper course of care is and exactly where the defendant failed.

BTW, the lawyer DOESN'T GET PAID unless he wins; his take on the judgment (up to 40 percent) may seem high, but it actually pays for all the work and research a lawyer's team has done to prepare for a case - and sometimes that can take up to a decade. Could you work on something for 10 years without any payment? Lawyers must take cases they are relatively certain will have a payout - but now the Bushies want to limit those payouts, removing a lawyer's incentive to take a case. That may seem fine to some people -- until they take medication that a company KNEW would create heart trouble, or have some other encounter with a company that puts profits over consumer service.

It does cost thousands of dollars to litigate any lawsuit, but that is often because the defense refuses to admit a mistake or liability. Jurors punish such defendants by ordering them to pay high punitives. But in almost all instances the damages awards issued by the jury - including the VERY worthwhile "McDonald's Coffee Case" - is reduced by the trial court.

As usual, the Bush Administration is trying to hoodwink people into supporting something that will actually harm them. The civil jury system exists not only to protect consumers, but also to protect capitalism itself by giving consumers a weapon to punish those businesses that put out dangerous products or put people at risk. The voters THINK they are doing something to strengthen the economy; what they are really doing is making it financially impossible for lawyers to take on the cases that will protect them as consumers.

[Ladyhawk]

8. You know better than most, Toad.

My experiences have been similar. Health care "professionals" can be...just horrible under certain circumstances.

[Deja Q]

9. I hear ya. I know there are MANY who've had bad experiences too:

And I just can't believe that anybody, not even one single person, who has had bad experiences would even consider Bush's comments of today, let alone blindly buy into Bush's potty talk about frivvy lawsuits being THE problem, as if those doctors, who must all be related to Daffy Duck, are always innocent and can do no wrong - even when they do a BIG wrong. Again, they get paid well because of the risks involved.

Business is/should-not-be how to cover their ass and avoid the consequences. If you or I screwed up in our peon jobs that we take way too seriously, we'd be toast quicker than you could say "Oops". But a doctor or insurance dealer or politician screws up or there's an act of nature? Well, just hike the rates or make some new laws, or bypass every sense of dignity, ethics, and morality a just society would have because they think they're better.