Tort Reform!
 

Yeah, doctors are never biased when talking about malpractice issues.

What did you think I meant by "industry groups" in this context?

Tort Reform!
 

They are the most reliable becuase they have the most interest in fixing the problem. They want lower rates. Insurance companys are not reliable, because they want profits. Lawyers are not reliable because they make to much money off of litigation. The doctors are in the best position to decide who is driving up their insurance rates.

The insurance companys and the trial lawyers are each pointing at eachother. The doctors are in the best position to tell who is full of it.

Tort Reform!
 

I can see why you are sceptical of insurance companys but why doctors? Why woud they point their fingers at trial lawyers if the insurance companys are the problem. If trial lawyers are not the problem, and they implement legislation to deal with the false lawyer problem (and the insurance companys are really the problem), then they are still stuck with high insurance rates.

Doctors hate insurance companys just as much as they hate lawyers. So when they say insurance companys are not the problem, lawyers are, I tend to trust them.

Another way to look at is if you come across a farmer, whose farm is surrounded by foxes and cougars, and his chickens are getting eaten. The foxes are accusing the cougars of eating the chickens and the cougars are accusing the foxers of eating the chickens. If the farmer tell you that the cougars are not eating the chickens, but the foxes are, who would you trust in this case? Of course the farmer. If he tells you foxes, and you kill them, and it is really the cougars, he is still screwed. If he tells you the cougars are not the problem, the only reason he would tell you that is if the cougars are not the problem. He has no reason to lie.

But both the foxes and the cougars are unreliable because they have a strong reason to lie.

In this case the farmer is the doctors (because they are the ones having to pay the high insurance rates), the insurance companys are the cougars and the lawyers are the foxes. And not surprisingly on this board full of foxes, I am being told that cougars are really the problem.

Tort Reform!
 

It seems like the lawyers are pointing the finger at the doctors, too, in the cases they file.

Are you really this blinded by the interests of your buddies?

Tort Reform!
 

Yeah, the doctors never commit malpractice. They're gods, so it's unpossible. It must be the patients, who hire the lawyers, to bring the frivolous lawsuits.

BTW, How can the insurers be directly to blame? I have no doubt the insurers overcharge and underpay, unless only the stupid insurers go into med. mal ins., but the rates bear at least some relationship to costs, and teh costs go up because of lawyers and the juries they seduce. So maybe we should blame the juries.

Tort Reform!
 

Yes but it is the insurance companys are charging the exhorbinant rates. The first one you think they would blame is the insurance companys. The lawyers are not sending them the insurance bills.

Tort Reform!
 

I'd trust the maimed chickens.

Tort Reform!
 

What if the famer's breath smells like chicken?

Tort Reform!
 

Of course, the whole time the farmer and his family have chicken every night and keep cashing checks from the insurance company for the lost chickens.

Tort Reform!
 

Spanky's farmers are vegetarians.

Tort Reform!
 

The farmer needs to get off his ass and build a henhouse. Xpost from FB.

Tort Reform!
 

No, no, no. If he stops "losing" chickens, the checks from the insurance company will stop. And we all know chicken futures are going down, so he is better off getting the recovery now rather than risking future market price decline.

Might I suggest that any of those involved in these hypos will not be disinterested, and if you really want to get a good answer, you need a Congressional study to be performed?

Tort Reform!
 

Easier solution - Bush wiretaps the farmer to uncover the entire chicken kiting scheme.

Tort Reform!
 

This reminds me. Spanky, my mom got a raccoon over the holidays. PM me with your email address if you want to see the pics. It's pretty cute.

Tort Reform!
 

From the grocery, or still alive?

Tort Reform!
 

As a kid I wanted a pet racoon but mom and dad wouldn't let me have one. I have been told that now, since I live in area with wild racoons, having a domesticated one is not a good idea. Plus I know my cats would not appreciate it.

When I hit the lottery I am going to get a pet tiger.

Tort Reform!
 

Perhaps the answer lies in converting Spanky's farm to a new crop, preferably one for which subsidies are available.

Tort Reform!
 

Look, you said tort reform was the answer and that lawsuits are the problem. I pointed out tort reform in your own state, and you still bitched about high insurance premiums where obgyns were charged more than they make (which I find hard to believe and blame on the fact that it sucks, sucks, sucks to be a physician in California for reasons that have nothing to do with malpractice insurance). I pointed out that the rates of malpractice claims and the amounts awarded haven't really changed much in a state without tort reform in the last 15 years and yet premiums were still rising. I also pointed out that a year after tort reform was passed in that state, premiums for 26% of the policies in that state went up by 10%.

Your precious Economist article talks about defensive medicine, a term that went out of favor a good 10 years ago in the ranks of physicians who like to bitch about malpractice premiums. You know why? Because of the IOM report that says that they fuck up a hell of a lot more than they think they do. And the 1991 Harvard study that said the same damned thing.

I really, really think that no-fault insurance may be the answer here. It's worked rather well for the automobile industry, and I think that with some changes to HQIA, it could work in the medical malpractice field.

The chickens like to squak a lot about a lot of things. Doesn't mean that they know what they're talking about. Believe me. I hang out with chickens more than you do.

ETA: And I haven't even once bitched about insurance surcharges for claims history in this argument. Which I think can squarely be placed on the shoulders of the insurance industry.

Tort Reform!
 

BTW, the Displaced Puppy was sporting jinglebells this holiday season, and her constant audible reminder of her presence, reminded me of your murdering cat problem. Perhaps if the felines were similarly adorned, the resident rodents and birds would be alerted to the cats' presense in order to make a timely getaway? If its a sex problem, I'm sure that they make masculine bells.

Tort Reform!
 

I thought you said you did not want to discuss this with me any more.

And I pointed out, insurance rates are already extremely high. The fact that you know an obstratrician that had to get out of the business should tell you something is really really screwed up. On their face, medical malpratice insurance rates are obscene. And the cost is directly passed to consumers. Medical insurance rates in other countrys are not even a small percentage of our rates in this country and the amount of lawsuits in this country concerning medical malpratice geometrically exceeds any other country.

You give me facts saying that rates are not increasing and I see other facts that say they are. According to the article you posted, the facts point out that rates in non-tort controlled states have increased dramatically, and in tort-controlled states less dramatically. And considering how high they are in the first place, the only direction they should be going is down.

As I pointed out, if the insurance companys were at fault, there would be a cattle drive to get into the market and no one would be pulling out. It is the other way around. In addition, that article pointed you cited pointed out why these comments about the tech boom loss of investments is utter B.S. put out by trial lawyers. The problem is clearly not caused by the insurance companys, and you have not shown me one scintilla of hard facts to contradict that.

You point out is it not the litigation, then what is causing the high costs? None of your studies seems to answer that quetsion. If it is not the litigation and it is not the insurance companys - who is causing the problem - the tooth fairy?

There is a massive amount of malpractice litigation in this country, and we have high medical malpractice insurance rates - and you are trying to tell me the two are not connected. Litigation is driving up insurance rates, and it is not making the doctors practice better medicine. The only thing the system is doing is taking money out of the patients hands and putting it in the hands of trial lawyers. Who then spend massive amounts of money on public relations and poltiical media buys to insure that there is no tort reform. Why do these lawyers have so much money, and how come they can spend so much money on politics if they are not really profiting from the system. Where is all this money coming from that is flowing into their pockets? They have tons of money because they are sucking the patients dry in this country and are not making health care any bettter.

No fault insurance will not solve the problem because if there is still a massive amount of litigation, the insurance rates will still be exorbinantly high.

Tort Reform!
 

My friend tried that and he paid the price. If I put bells on my cats they would make me pay until I took them off. I simply tried to put collars on them and they destroyed half my furniture.

Tort Reform!
 

If you followed the Fashion Board, you would be familiar with the Lotka-Volterra model, which describes the interaction among species in an ecosystem. Without getting too much into detail, let's just say that

dR/dt = a*R - b*R*F
dF/dt = e*b*R*F - c*F


where the parameters are defined by:

-a is the natural growth rate of hens in the absence of predation,
-c is the natural death rate of cougars in the absence of food,
-b is the death rate per encounter of hens due to predation,
-e is the efficiency of turning predated hens into cougars.

It's not just reality tv and fisting references over there, you know.

Pat at it again
 

Fuck, man, I wonder what my dad did to deserve his stroke. He was never PM of Israel or anything.

• Robertson says Sharon's stroke is God's punishment
  
  
  The Reverend Pat Robertson says Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's massive stroke could be God's punishment for giving up Israeli territory.
  
  The founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network told viewers of "The 700 Club" that Sharon was "dividing God's land," even though the Bible says doing so invites "God's enmity."
  
  Robertson added, "I would say woe to any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course."
  
  He noted that former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.
  
  Robertson said God's message is, "This land belongs to me. You'd better leave it alone."

http://www.kare11.com/news/cooler_ar...storyid=115851

Pat at it again
 

I guess we all know what the assassination of Lincoln was punishment for.

Tort Reform!
 

It's not surprising that you defend the honor of the MDs and the insurance companies against the evil trial lawyers, but the fact remains that there is a shitload of medical malpractice going on. Doctors blame lawyers because that is what doctors do. Hating lawyers is ingrained in them from the first day of med school. But I couldn't care less whether a doctor is free to practice when and how he or she wishes, free from the crushing burden of insurance. We should be concerned about increasing the quality of health care in this country. Someone said earlier that doctors don't like to admit to mistakes. That is absolutely true. Almost all doctors have a God complex. They think they never make a mistake. If the AMA kicked out a few more of the bad apples, and mandated aggressive reductions in medical errors, you'd see the number of malpractice cases drop precipitously because a small number of doctors do most of the damage. Get rid of them and there'd be a lot fewer cases to go around. But so long as the AMA treats their bad apples the way the Catholic Church does, they won't get rid of anyone.

I get a monthly bar journal that lists the names of disbarred and reprimanded attorneys, and goes into their cases for pages and pages. I don't know of anything like that for MDs. I do know there are MDs who are sued multiple times and the AMA doesn't say boo - because MDs don't make mistakes.

Tort Reform!
 

http://w3.health.state.ny.us/opmc/fa...earch?openform

Here's one that gives info on all malpractice payouts (info not easily available for attorneys):

http://profiles.massmedboard.org/Pro....asp?Brn=29562

Tort Reform!
 

The National Practitioner Data Bank was created in 1986, as part of the Healthcare Quality Improvement Act (which also established the procedures for peer review in hospitals). The NPDB was finally implemented in 1990, and all medical malpractice payouts (settlement or trial), most medical board actions, and some peer review actions are reported to the data bank. (The Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank was created by HIPAA in 1996, and does the same sort of thing for fraud and abuse issues.) It's a tool that is not accessible by the general public, but insurers, peer review committees and medical boards have access to the information in the data bank when they are making decisions about insuring, licensing or granting privileges to a physician.

Additionally, many states have data bases that keep track of claims information and medical board actions per individual physician. The medical board information is generally available to the public.

The Texas State Board of Medical Examiners have kicked it up a notch in going after bad doctors. In 2001, for example, there were 108 disciplinary actions in Texas against physicians. In 2004, there were 263. Most notoriously is the action against Eric Sheffey, an orthopedic surgeon here in Houston, who was sued over 60 times in the last 20 years, but was STILL on the Texas Workforce Commission's panel to handle worker's comp claims. That this guy was making $3.3 million dollars in 2002 from the Texas Workforce Commission, hacking people up, often unnecessarily, doesn't really make me particularly sympathetic to his malpractice insurance bitching. It does, however, make me extremely pissed off that the TSBME took so fucking long to yank his license.

ETA: Bad doctors are weeded out three ways. 1.) Medical malpractice claims, 2.) The state licensure board, and 3.) Confidential peer review actions within a healthcare facility. If numbers 2 and 3 were more vigorous, then number 1 wouldn't be as much of an issue because the physicians would be policing their own.

ETA2: Some physicians I've talked to about why #3 isn't more often used say that their response when a collegue is clearly not any good is to simply stop referring to the colleague. They think that the economic hit is enough, and they're so protective of their own licenses/privileges, they don't like to fuck with other physicians'. Also, with regard to #3, check out Polliner v. Texas Health Systems.

Note: I've defended physicians in both #2 and #3, but not #1.

ETA3: I also fully understand and probably support the physicians who are extremely, extremely pissed off that the St. Luke's Medical Tower will be named after John O'Quinn sometime next in the next month. I don't care that he gave them $25million. No building of science should be named after the man who brought the breast inplant cases upon the world.

Tort Reform!
 

I don't defend the honor of doctors. I am just simply pointed out that they have no reason to lie when they say lawyers and not insurance companys are the problem. Doctors are screwing up all the time in this country but the tort system does not seem to be addressing the problem while dramatically increasing medical costs. Patients end up paying for the high insurance rates doctors have to pay.

Trial lawyers are getting fat and the system is not getting better. It is a poor allocation of resources.

Tort Reform!
 

Jesus H, you have your head firmly up your ass on this. It's really shocking.

Tort Reform!
 

2.
What the med system needs is a little Sharia. Say a Doctor fucks up a patient's right hand- lop off the Dr's hand. Cut off a leg accidently- same. It would mean guys can't be oby-gyn anymore, and of course women couldn't be educated at all, but we can work out something. kill an ovary with bad surgery- lose a testi, etc.

Pat at it again
 

Under that theory, should all the people leave?



(Thanks, shifty, for posting something not about medical malpractice or tort reform. I would note that Robertson's analysis is undoubtedly correct, as he is a disinterested observer. He also told me that God wanted the chickens to die; it was his way of saying "eat more beef.")

Tort Reform!
 

Come now. You are arguing that the person getting sued is in the right position to determine whether there is a problem. Payouts relate to either (1) legitimate claims or (2) illegitimate claims. A cap on damages hits (1) (because we all settle the nuisance claims well below the cap). So, what docs are really saying is that they pay too much when they commit malpractice.

To return to the fox and the hens, you're letting that there fox into the henhouse. Do you expect him to leave with an empty belly?

Tort Reform!
 

Do you read that journal, other than while taking a dump?

Seriously, though -- the Bar, while it may be better than the AMA, is hardly exemplary. At least in Cal. Just try finding out the reasons a lawyer was disciplined -- it's a nightmare, and not something that would help any client who was in even a slight hurry.

Tort Reform!
 

I've read this entire thread. How many CLE credits do I get?

Pat at it again
 

not in today's dinners, to the contrary in the short term

Tort Reform!
 

No, only when taking a dump. Thankfully, they print it on cheap paper so it's like so totally recyclable.

The Politics of Allergies?
 

Hi. I doesn't look like the Detroit Board has been active, so I thought I'd post here. Just a question on legalities concerning schools/requirements for allergic kids. If anyone thinks they can help, here's the post. Thanks!!!

http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/sho...916#post231916

The Politics of Allergies?
 

ummm, I've answered it. Law of the Jungle.

The Politics of Allergies?
 

Yes. In Detroit they apparently cover the malls in peanut shells just to weed out the weak kids.

Tort Reform!
 

Personally I think it chafes a bit.