Fashion Board 6-9-04 to 7-13-04

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Apologies in advance if this strikes people as a Politics issue, but there's an MD in South Carolina who's asking the AMA for an ethics ruling that he and others can refuse medical treatment to med-mal lawyers, their spouses, and their children. This proposal would create a "carve out" to the Hippocratic Oath that has for 2,500 years made doctors better and less selfish than lawyers.

I don't see why they are bothering with the AMA. It is their state medical boad that determines what ethical standards they are held to.

I don't know of any state that requires a doctor to treat lawyers if the doctor doesn't want to. It is perfectly legal, just like the doctor doesn't have to treat patients without insurance.

The problem will be with the insurance plans they are participating providers with. I suspect that their contracts don't allow for them to selectively refuse to treat a plan member.

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
If the linked NPR story is the same one I heard this morning, there's also an "insurance" scheme under which MDs can pay yearly for pre-paid legal services to file retributive counterclaims against former patients who allege negligence in medical treatment. (The story is silent on this, but I'll wager they're writing it off as a business expense.)

If their lawyers are filing frivolous counter claims, then the lawyers should be disciplined and the court should sanction them. If they have legitimate counterclaims, then why would have a problem with them filing their counterclaims?

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
I'm not a med-mal lawyer, but if this passes the AMA I will dedicate a decent portion of my life to bringing whatever pain I can to MDs and their spouses and their children. That includes the ones to whom I am related.

Doing what? Filing frivolous lawsuits against them?

[Mister_Ruysbroeck]

Originally posted by paprika
(so confused!!)

You'll get the hang of it.

Welcome back.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Study shows high mortality from single-punch bar fights can be explained by a simple principle of physics: It's not the falling; it's the stopping.

From the story:

One of those convicted is 22-year-old Oliver Cozens, who was jailed for nine months in November 2001.

With one punch he managed to kill a fellow reveller following a row in a taxi queue outside a Southampton nightclub.

Mr Cozens . . . told BBC News Online: "My mates still get into fights and they see the other person get up and walk away from it. So they just do not realise the risk.

"I'm too scared to punch someone now. I'd just walk away."

Mr Cozens' mother, Karen Pervin, 43, said: "If I was standing there now I would say just walk away but they don't do they?

"Oliver is going to feel the guilt of having killed someone with that stupid strike to the face for the rest of his life."

All of that would be much more affecting if the ". . ." were not replacing the phrase "who is currently in jail for an unrelated conviction for grievous bodily harm."

I guess he kicked someone instead of punching? So it didn't count? Or maybe he punched someone who was sitting down. Either way, he is obviously a reformed man, even though he is suffering from the guilt of having killed someone with a strike to the face.

[Fugee]

I am much too fond of the "free exercise" clause to move to South Carolina or anywhere to found a "Christian" country. I grew up in church denominations founded by people who were kicked out of the Old Country for bucking the state church. So Thurgreed will be stuck with me here for awhile longer.

Speaking of TM, who'd have thunk he'd fall for the old "soap opera actor had brown teeth" ploy. I think that's in the latest edition of "The Rules."

What's the deal with throngs of people waiting in line in the heat for hours to walk past Reagan's casket, not to mention travelling distances to do so? It's not just that I don't particularly revere him; I can't think of any public figure for which I would feel the need to do that. I don't usually even go up to the casket at funerals. What am I missing?

[Shape Shifter]

Has anyone tried this?

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...atures/2619236

(Gillette's new vibrating razor)

It sounds good, but I'm still kinda pissed at Gillette for the Mach 3. Great concept, but the blades get duller faster than Ty on Politics, and the replacements are expensive. I suspect that will still be the case here.

[mmm3587]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
[doctors]

You know, fuck doctors. Yeah, I've said it, and I'll say it again. Fuck doctors. They need to get over their damn selves.

They need to stop going on and on about how it's a higher calling and all that shit. We get it: you're smart, you did well in school and on the MCAT and got into medical school, you worked really hard and passed your boards and made it through a horrendous residency. And now you're 40 and your median income is $300k a year. And you're not all living in big cities; a lot of you pull that down in Kansas Fucking City!

Anyway, stop it with the walking on water shit. Part of the reason that we need to have a strong plaintiff's bar is so that you assholes keep your standards high. And they must be high. I don't care if my pothead mechanic fucks up my car; I care if my cokehead doctor fucks up my heart. Used to be, one of you assholes fucked up, and there were no consequences. That's changed when we started to realize how much you were killing us when you were careless.

And we started suing your asses for it. Sure, there is abuse of medical malpractice litigation. But there is also incompetency that must be harshly and strongly reprimanded. Never has a group that so effectively has cornered the market and profited from it bitched so much about changes in the market.

I like doctors, and have a lot of doctor friends. But all the most arrogant people I have known are doctors. All the assholes who you have to hound to leave at least 12% on a big check are doctors. All the fuckers never tipping the dealer I know are doctors. And I'm sick of it. Too much of the education of doctors results in them thinking they are fucking gods. You're not gods; you're dorky kids who spent all their time studying and day dreaming about getting laid a lot and being goodlooking. That never happened, but now you have low handicaps and nice German cars. Fine, but you're still the same mortal.

Enough with your "we won't be able to provide effective care" bullshit. Medical malpractice premiums and claims are expensive, because you ruin someone's life when you fuck up. So try not to fuck up. At least meet the standards of care. If most of the medical malpractice cases I've read about or known about personally weren't all crazy egregious and shit, I wouldn't be as heated. But there is still so much crazy, incompetent shit going on, that I think it would be a huge mistake to limit liability. All that does is create a balancing test: "How many 7 series will it cost me to phone in this hysterectomy? How's my insurance look these days? Fuck, I really want to make that tee time!"

Fuck you. You knew what you were signing up for, or you should have. If not, fuck you. You've benefited from the market, and now it's readjusting to better address the situation. Boo fucking hoo your premiums are a hundred grand a year. Go be a doctor somewhere with socialized health care or without a developed legal system. You'd be driving a car your kids wouldn't be caught dead in!

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Your dog is smarter than your two-year-old.

They spent good money to prove dogs understand words? Hell, they could have just watched how Hank's dog slinks away every time he puts on Barry White and breaks out the peanut butter jar.

All work and no play makes Hank a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Hank a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Hank a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Hank a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Hank a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Hank a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Hank a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Hank a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Hank a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Hank a dull boy.

[Hank Chinaski]

was bill walton at the game tonight? did he seem disappointed with Luke?

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by mmm3587
You know, fuck doctors.

And all they have to do to get laid is say, "I'm a doctor." Assholes.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

PLF's evil twin exposed. Or he's moonlighting or something.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
PLF's evil twin exposed. Or he's moonlighting or something.

That's twice today.

So you've traded in Josh for Sullivan, eh? I guess the Jedi Mind Trick is working.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Not Me
If their lawyers are filing frivolous counter claims, then the lawyers should be disciplined and the court should sanction them. If they have legitimate counterclaims, then why would have a problem with them filing their counterclaims?

I don't have a problem with them filing legitimate counterclaims, although I'm hard pressed to think of what those are in this context. (Sue them for the conversion of the sponges and clamps they carry in their abdomens?) I have a problem with them having a collective funding mechanism to do it systematically, because it divorces the decision to litigate from the cost of doing so. The American rule is what we have to discourage litigation --- rarely does the plaintiff have em's attorneys' fees paid by others as the litigation progresses. Having a pool from which to draw fees borders on champerty.

Doing what? Filing frivolous lawsuits against them?

There's more than one way for a lawyer to make people miserable. Check a mirror.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
That's twice today.

So you've traded in Josh for Sullivan, eh? I guess the Jedi Mind Trick is working.

Congratulations: You are the first person in the history of blogdom to confuse Fafblog! with Andrew Sullivan.

To draw a contrast, here is each in their own words.

• "This is a good blog. This is the best blog. It is about god and the universe and those horrible screaming monkeys and that time I made a pizza out of an old tire and a can of whip cream. It is the Fafblog."
  
  - Fafnir on Fafblog

You can see why Fafblog! is Flinty's favorite. Flinty has now sworn off leaving the house so that he can stay in and read Fafblog! Apparently Sullivan is too high-brow and serious to explain what he's up to, as you can see here:

• WHAT UP WITH THAT BLUE COLOR?
  Some people love our deep background colors; others find white-type-on-dark a torture to read and send hate-mail. The dark colors aren't going away any time soon, but we've extended an olive branch: You can reverse any page on the site to black-text-on-white with a click on the"Black & White" button (on every page under the section heading). One click reverses color for an entire session. We could make personal color settings permanent, but we'd need to smuggle some browser cookies onto your computer to accomplish this, and that would bring us a bigger bag of hate mail.

Still awake? I'm not.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Having a pool from which to draw fees borders on champerty.

I would like to think that the laws of economics will somehow work against this little plan to systematically fund* meritless litigation, but I haven't really reckoned with the institutionalized irrationality that is the health care system.

* No good alternative to the split infinitive here.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Congratulations: You are the first person in the history of blogdom to confuse Fafblog! with Andrew Sullivan.

To draw a contrast, here is each in their own words.

• "This is a good blog. This is the best blog. It is about god and the universe and those horrible screaming monkeys and that time I made a pizza out of an old tire and a can of whip cream. It is the Fafblog."
  
  - Fafnir on Fafblog

Fair 'nuff.

But I didn't bother to click the link. And since Andy had the same story earlier today...well, sue me*

* but not like Atticus' Doctors