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Lennonite Priest
Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dippin
The claim that malpractice suits are the main culprit for the US's poor healthcare system is simply a red herring from those who want to avoid change at any cost. It ignores that several states have already implemented tort reform without all the supposedly wonderful cost reductions. In fact, 23 states have limits on non-economic damages and 34 have limits on punitive damages.
The sum of all malpractice payouts and all malpractice insurance is less than 2% of all healthcare spending in the US.
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Really??? That's why there are certain types of doctors that because of malpractice insurance are unable to practice because of the economic reality in some states. (Like OB/GYNs)?
High Cost Of Malpractice Insurance - CBS Evening News - CBS News
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CBS) Dr. Paul Tudder figures he's delivered about 4,000 babies in 21 years, and in that time, he's never been sued.
Yet, as CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports, his malpractice insurance has gone through the roof. His premium was $23,000 in 2002. Then it jumped to $47,000. This year, he got a quote for $84,000.
"It puts me on yearly notice," says Tudder. "This year I think we can survive, but next year I don't know."
The insurance industry claims all OB-GYNs are paying the price for what they call out-of-control malpractice awards, far beyond what victims deserve. They support limits on how much money victims can win in court.
"Medical malpractice costs are all about lawsuits, settlements and jury awards," says P.J. Crowley, an insurance industry representative.
But Joan Claybrook, of the Public Citizen Consumer Group, says that's not the case.
"But it's a great, easy excuse," she says.
Claybrook insists the rate hikes aren't about lawsuits but about the insurance industry making up for investment losses. Investments are their main source of income.
In fact, from 2001 to 2002 when many OB-GYNs saw their rates double, malpractice payouts to victims were actually on the decline.
But insurance companies were losing big on their investments.
"The insurance company does not want to explain how they set their premiums, so they divert public attention and blame it all on people who are injured and their lawyers," says Claybrook.
Insurers admit they've lost money on investments, but insist that's not behind the skyrocketing rates - it's the lawsuits, they say.
"To those who suggest that legal expenses have nothing to do with the costs of insurance or the costs of health care in our society - these people belong in the 'flat earth society,'" says Crowley.
Caught in the middle, Tudder just hopes someone will find a way to deliver lower insurance rates so he can keep delivering babies.
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Taken from a professional medical magazine website
Do You Have the Right Malpractice Insurance Policy? - Nov-Dec, 2004 - Family Practice Management
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Do You Have the Right Malpractice Insurance Policy?
Here’s how to make sure your expensive policy doesn’t contain any unpleasant surprises.
David R. Dearden, JD, and Michael R. Burke, JD
The costs a physician could incur to successfully defend a single claim of malpractice would likely exceed the annual premium for liability insurance, and this fact alone makes malpractice insurance a sound business expense. Unfortunately, it’s one that growing numbers of physicians can’t afford. Physicians and patients in 20 states are facing a full-blown medical liability crisis" (up from 12 states two years ago), and at least 24 others are "showing problem signs," according to the American Medical Association.
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Quote:
Costs Of Malpractice Insurance Go Beyond Doctors' Premiums
Investors,com ^ | October 30, 2009 | THOMAS SOWELL
Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 8:13:53 PM by Kaslin
This is the fourth installment of a nine-part series excerpting the chapter on medical care from the new edition of economist Thomas Sowell's "Applied Economics."
A major source of the high cost of American medical care is malpractice insurance for doctors and hospitals.
The average cost of this insurance for individual doctors ranges from about $14,000 a year in California to nearly $40,000 a year in West Virginia. In particular specialties, such as obstetrics and neurosurgery, the cost of malpractice insurance can exceed $200,000 a year in some places.
These costs of course get passed on to patients, the government or whoever is paying for medical treatments. Even so, these are not the only financial costs created by medical malpractice lawsuits, nor are financial costs the only costs or necessarily the most important costs.
The threat of lawsuits can impose costs on obstetricians that raise their insurance premiums high enough to cause many of these doctors to stop delivering babies, or to stop delivering them in places where high jury awards on dubious evidence make it uneconomic to continue practicing obstetrics.
The net result of this can be that pregnant women in those places are at more risk than before because now there may be no doctor available in the vicinity to deliver their baby when the time comes.
Nor are obstetricians the only doctors who flee from places where it is easy to file lawsuits and win large damage awards. Pennsylvania, for example, lost one third of its surgeons between 1995 and 2002.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2374999/posts
(Yes, the above was taken from the Free Republic posting boards... however, I do not have a subscription to Investors.com or IBD to get the article.)
For people to ignore the high cost and severity of Malpractice lawsuits and insurance is fucking ignorant.
It's not the only cause of out of control expensive healthcare but it is an integral part of it.
Those who want to claim it is the insurance industry and HMO's and the medical profession just raping the people are not seeing the whole picture.
The plan that is being put forth is not going to make the triad I put forth any cheaper at all. In fact it will make it far worse, far more expensive and services far more ineffective.
I am all for healthcare reform.... have been for many many moons and I have argued for it here since I have joined TFP. But what is being passed is bullshit and in no way a healthy, beneficial plan. What Congress is pushing through is destructive. There were and are far, far better, more efficient, economically sound ways to get reform and protect the people uninsured and keep government out of our lives.
The saddest part of all this is some of you are more than willing to sacrifice freedoms for what YOU believe everyone else needs.
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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"
Last edited by pan6467; 01-03-2010 at 01:51 PM..
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