Reply With Quote
That's one of the problems. Limiting the award arbitrarily limits the feasibility of suing in the first place, in addition to denying equitable compensation to the most grievously injured.
I agree, caps are ridiculous as to where people set them to. If someone is truly harmed and deserves compensation, how can a limit be placed on proper compensation?
That is what fails with tort reform in Texas, if i recall how it's done.
That's one of the problems. Limiting the award arbitrarily limits the feasibility of suing in the first place, in addition to denying equitable compensation to the most grievously injured.
Maybe there are other remedies in TX for a person like that. I don't really know.
"the feasibility of suing in the first place"
lawyers won't spend their expensive time for 30% contingency of $250K, slamming the courthouse door on plaintiffs.
America's a great place, if you have enough money.
Speaking of dog , capitalists are lending lawyers money to finance litigation costs, in return for a slice of the winnings. The lawyers are passing the interest charges to the plaintiffs.
Greatly slowed the rise in medical liability insurance, brought medical liability insurance companies in the state (we were down to 2, IIRC), and increased the number of doctors operating in the state (we had a HUGE shortage back then).
Aka, most of what it was expected to.
It was expected to have a slight effect on personal and group medical insurance rates, as well as base patient costs, and didn't, but that would have been a secondary effect.
"most of what it was expected to"
iow, NONE of the objectives were to the benefit of patients, only to the increased profits (aka, patients' payments) of the heavily lobbying sick-care industry.
If you don't see a patient benefit in pretty significantly increasing the number of doctors working in the state, I can't help you.
But yes, the goal was not to help the patients in terms of their costs. It was a side effect they were hopeful about, but it wasn't a goal.
Still think the best thing any government could do would be to allow perpetual tax free HSA/Flex accounts that include employer contributions, and requiring employers who offer insurance with employer payment portion to pay to whatever policy the employee wants.
I don't need your help, but I deeply, sincerely appreciate your generously condescending offer.
More TX doctors only helps patients if those doctors were in primary care and/or in rural areas or in taxpayer funded sick-care. My guess is that close to none of them were.
The nationwide sick-care crisis is in medical services in sparse rural areas and in primary doctors everywhere (primary care doctors make many $10Ks less than specialists. sick-care is all about money, esp paying off $100K+ in college/med school loans), not about caring for the sick.
Considering you're usually a partisan hack who spends more time coming up with semi-clever nicknames than actually wanting to discuss both sides of an issue, I have no problem with being condescending to you :p
Actually, a LOT of the gains were in rural areas, etc. Since tort reform at least 18 rural counties have picked up their FIRST emergency services doctor, and rural obstetrics, etc, have all had amazing gains. Also TX is the only state in which the number primary care physicians is increasing at a faster rate than population.
You really should do a little research on it's effects on the medical industry instead of just spouting out how it was a prop to the greedy capitalist medical industry. Tort reform did a LOT of good.
It was just a step on the path of fixing TX's massively broken medical care system, though. The State needs to address the cost of care, and the regulation of the medical insurance field, but unfortunately doesn't have the balls for it.
"address the cost of care"
but if TX, or anybody in USA, gets the exorbitant, ripoff medical equipment, hospital, drugs, doctors costs down...
oops, there is no "if".
It will never happen. The sick-care industry is one of the many owners and operators of govt at all levels.
Americans getting bled for medical costs at twice the rate of "socialistic" national health care in other advanced countries is a key component of the oligarchy screwing America.
Show me some of your research and facts where TX tort reform had significant, or any, impact on facilitating sick care in rural TX.
lol @ the bot demanding cites.
Not disagreeing with that. Republicans gave a handout to big pharma with the medicare prescription BS, and Democrats are giving medical insurance a handout with this past "reform" BS. Neither side is trustworthy to actually try and fix it.
Which is why I'll never understand why people want the government more involved in it.
Dude. Go check out the Texas medical boards websites or any number of patient care advocate sites centered around Tx. In like 5 minutes earlier I found about 5 or 6 different websites I'd consider at least remotely reliable and fair with data on it.
I know you have a real mind, you should it every once in a while....
The med mal tort reform has done away with suits against doctors; for all intents and purposes, doctors have a practical immunity from negligence claims because, as noted above, the costs of prosecuting a suit are way too high -- given the incredible amounts of expert testimony that is required and given the prohibitively time-consuming special appellate processes that are available now in med mal actions -- for individuals to bear and the potential recovery is way too low to make those suits economically feasible for law firms.
It's a brilliant tactic if you make a policy choice that favoring business is better for the State than affording achievable legal remedies to those who are actually injured -- an end that tort reform definitely seems to be promoting.
"costs of prosecuting a suit are way too high"
new investor angle:
wealthy capitalists looking for high returns, 15%+, are financing malpractice suits for a cut of the payout, with the financed lawyers taking their interest charges out of the plaintiff's cut.
Investors Funding Medical Malpractice, Divorce Lawsuits
Total investments in lawsuits at any given time now exceed $1 billion, several industry participants estimated. Although no figures are available on lawsuits supported by lenders, public records from one state, New York, show that over the last decade, more than 250 law firms borrowed on pending cases, often repeatedly.
Such financing also drains money from plaintiffs. Interest rates on lawsuit loans generally exceed 15 percent a year, and most states allow lawyers that borrow to bill clients for the interest payments. The cost can exceed the benefits of winning. A woman injured in a 1995 car accident outside Philadelphia borrowed money for a suit, as did her lawyer. By the time she won $169,125 in 2003, the lenders were owed $221,000.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/1...ml?view=print#
===========
"doctors have a practical immunity from negligence claims"
... coupled with states and professional associations hiding convicted nurses, doctors, etc who go to practice in another state.
I certainly wouldn't say tort reform is perfect (it definitely restricts recoverable losses more than I'd like, but I do think there should be caps unless the damage done is permanent).
I'm just saying that to say it has had NO good effects in a blatantly incorrect statement. It corrected a rather dangerous shortage of both medical liability insurance companies and doctors of all persuasions. The state had to take some action, they just made it a little to strict due to the business friendly nature of TX politics.
Is there some empirical formula for quantifying how much anguish a person endures?
Is every person's physical pain and suffering the same?
I think the delicious irony of tort reform lies in the paternalistic view of legislation that it accepts. Those who most frequently trumpet tort reform (a curb on market forces and a very hands-on governmental activity) are the biggest promoters of free markets and limited government involvement outside of the courtroom.
I don't personally have any problem with anyone trying to make as much money as he or she possibly can; I do have a problem with saying that the pursuit of those profits is so much more important than anything else that we're willing to artificially cap the remedies available to those who might be harmed by the pursuit of profits.
This is America, Profoundly Secularistic and Materialistic, even the "Christians".
Making Money Is The Only Thing.
Ethics, Morality, Laws Be Damned.
Everything Else Is Secondary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCkOmcIl79s
Yeah, that is kind of weird. But the world is made of weird things.
Arguing against caps on a moralistic grounds is perfectly fine with me. The whole idea of caps is morality vs practicality. In an ideal world caps wouldn't be necessary because people would only sue when it's deserved and would only be awarded appropriate awards. Unfortunately that's not the case in any sector of civil suits in this country.
As a result, TX was pushed to the brink of a collapse of the entire medical care field. We lost insurance companies. We lost doctors. We lost nurses. Practiciality dictated we do something to limit their exposure or risk not having medical care for pretty much anyone.
In a society who's motto is pretty much "Forget what I deserve, gimme what I want," it's hard to rely on moralism.
Can you substantiate this at all, or was it offered more in the nature of a private opinion? Just curious.
I heard things were pretty bad, but I had no idea TX's whole health care system was teetering on the brink of collapse, pre-tort reform.
"TX was pushed to the brink of a collapse of the entire medical care field."
scare-mongering bull .
so you believe the lies of the insurance companies and docs and their Repug hit men.
"brink of collapse" was an intentional overstatement, but it was in bad shape. We almost certainly would have been down to a single medical liability insurance company within a couple years (we were down to 2, and one was reducing the number of policies they were issuing in Texas), and we were losing medical personnel while maintaining one of the fastest growing populations.
It was not a good combination.
There is a benefit in that sense but when it was sold to the public it was based on the premise that premiums and costs would go down it was a lie. The evil trial lawyers were supposedly the reason why insurance was so high (translating into higher costs for citizens) and tort reform was a cure those greedy bas s.
So I do agree that having more doctors available is good thing the however the numbered of unisnured has risen since. Now we have more people who can't afford to see more doctors.
Those who championed the need for tor reform lied about the benefits.
Well, championing something based on a secondary benefit is always a stupid idea. Most of the industry people (health care, insurance, etc) expected there'd be little to no monetary benefit to end consumers. But you could easily make a valid argument that it should have (lower costs to doctors + greater supply of doctors should reduce base cost, lower base cost means lower insurance payouts which should reduce premiums), but there was never going to be a massive effect.
It did, however, slow the growth of costs charged to consumers, but not by a serious account.
Of course, I don't remember anyone championing tort reform as a way to reduce consumer costs, but back then I wasn't paying too much attention to the news and most of what I saw on tort reform was from industry papers.
That's the frequent rationalization for selling tort reform to the masses -- few policy initiatives aren't sold as fostering direct economic benefit to the public, and tort reform is decidedly among those. In the specific context of tort reform, that benefit is decidedly overplayed (I think).
The end result of tort reform is mostly that those whose interests it best serves see bottom line increases that stay with them -- they make more money through the grant of practical immunity than they would have if faced with the possibility of actually being made to pay for their wrongs. In this sense, I'd dispute that capping damages or limiting liability is a "moralistic" policy choice in any sense; it's almost exclusively about protecting the profits of the wealthy and encouraging profit seeking by doing away with external impediments to profit making.
It's also rather obvious, I think, that many of those who champion tort reform would prefer to see the civil justice system eradicated altogether. I was recently at a luncheon where a judicial officer of the state of Texas spoke openly about a belief that the State would be a better place if there was no personal injury litigation. That's a pretty scary thought.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions