I think we can all acknowledge that almost any medical procedure involves risk. Therfore I ask, why not get a firm handle of tort reform, and not allow people to sue over any little thing gone wrong.
Random, in another thread, you said:
So should a patient be able to sue under a worse case scenario, if there is no evidence the medical staff did anything wrong?
If the hospital was unsanitary and that caused the fatal infection then yes they should be able to sue.
define 'little thing'?
Since tort reform has passed in TX the cost of insurance has continued to rise. In addition TX has the highest rate of uninsured people in the USA.
So what exaclty has tort reform done in TX?
Do you know how to read?if there is no evidence the medical staff did anything wrong?
It's hard getting through your stupid theoretical questions.
Define little things..
What has tort reform done for TX?
On a somewhat related note:
http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/13/er...-town-shows-no
"Erin Brockovich" Town Shows No Cancer Cluster
Hinkley, California, the town made famous in the Oscar-winning Julia Roberts movie Erin Brockovich, does not show any evidence of an increased rate of cancers.
Pacific Gas and Electric, which released a toxic plume of hexavalent chromium 6 from a Hinkley-based natural gas pipeline station, paid a record $333 million to settle a class-action suit in 1996. But the California Cancer Registry has now completed three studies that show cancer rates remained normal in from 1988 to 2008.
From a very strange story by the Los Angeles Times' Louis Sahagun, who starts out with the Registry's findings but then lists more anecdotes about residents (including an eight-year old dog) who claim PG&E-related ailments:
From 1996 to 2008, 196 cancers were identified among residents of the census tract that includes Hinkley — a slightly lower number than the 224 cancers that would have been expected given its demographic characteristics, said epidemiologist John Morgan, who conducted the California Cancer Registry survey.
The survey did not attempt to explain why any individual in Hinkley contracted cancer, nor did it diminish the importance of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. cleaning up a plume of groundwater with elevated levels of chromium 6, Morgan said.
"In this preliminary assessment we only looked at cancer outcomes, not specific types of cancer," Morgan said. "However, we did look at a dozen cancer types in earlier surveys of the same census tract for the years between 1988 and 1998. Overall, the results of those surveys were almost identical to the new findings, and none of the cancers represented a statistical excess."
The LAT calls the rate of cancers in Hinkley "fewer...than expected." That depends on who was doing the expectin'. Back in 2000, when the movie came out, Walter Olson wrote in Reason that the Hinkley cancer cluster did not seem to be materializing and gave a thumbs down to the performances of the actual (rather than the Hollywood) Brockovich and her boss, Thousand Oaks personal injury lawyer Edward Masry.
Coincidentally, Brockovich is now back in Hinkley, pursuing claims about a return of the chromium plume.
ah, the good old tort-reform canard. quack quack.
that duck doesn't migrate, spends the whole year in SpursTalk.
conservatives will dream up anything to enrich the richies and over the citizens.
"not allow people to sue over any little thing gone wrong."
do they now? did they ever? How does that get past the judges? Every plaint is accepted, none dismissed as groundless?
Are medical malpractice suits a primary cause of the US $3T ripoff sick-care scam?
or is this just another Welfare-Queen scare-mongering to slime EVERY plaintiff as an insurance cheater?
the US medical system kills 90K people EVERY YEAR with AVOIDABLE medical errors.
And let's not get started how many people are killed or maimed with FDA-approved crap from BigPharma.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-15-2010 at 03:12 PM.
Maybe the people got spooked and stopped drinking the tap water these last 10 years?
Tainted PG&E groundwater plume again threatens residents of Hinkley, Calif.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...,4878497.story
DarrinS, would drink that corporate ? give it to your kids?
I loved the movie!
Able to sue? Yes.
Able to win, without it being summarily dimissed? Let a judge decide.
Thing is that if it is obvious that no one did anything wrong, and proper procedures were followed, such cases don't go anywhere.
The vast majority of such litigation never sees a jury. You do know that right?
Yet it happens anyway.
I thought the risk involved in any medical procedure is directly proportional to the color of the doctor/surgeon's skin?
I could be wrong.....
LOL..
You are wrong.
No . When Holbrooke told that Pakistani Doctor to stop the war in Afghanistan he probably shouldn't have had to tell him to fix his heart first...
We're still waiting for the cost to patients to go down in Texas.
It aint happening for some time. It's more than just tort reform anyway. Besides, anyone ever agree that the Texas fix was the right one?
It's the old "jobs created or saved" argument.
We can claim that prices would have gone up more without tort reform and you can't prove us wrong.
What pathetic bull , CC. You don't even believe that.
Previously posted, topical:
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...ce+tort&page=4
That was never the objective.
Tort reform objectives were to reduce insurance companies' liability, and doctors' premiums, increasing everbody's bottom line while continuing to ripoff the patients with ever-increasing charges.
Somebody reduce citizens' costs? The entire sick-care game is to suck ever more money out of the patients.
I don't make that claim, CC. I thought (and still think) the costs of doing nothing were preferable to the incredibly ty deal we got. On health care and the financial bailout both.
And it's pretty much undisputable that the benefit of tort reform to the TX health care consumer has been well nigh unmeasurable.
The benefit to doctors is considerable, though. Insurance costs for doctors are down (roughly) 25% since 2003. There are more doctors in TX, so that's a plus. But the hype of malpractice awards as a cost driver of health care per se, has been monumentally exaggerated. This thread continues that tradition.
Last edited by Winehole23; 12-15-2010 at 04:52 PM.
Also related:
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...ht=tort+reform
Donations to 2008 Presidential candidates by health care industry:
More doctors in Texas since caps were ins uted:
Last edited by Winehole23; 12-15-2010 at 03:42 PM.
Aw c'mon WH...I just love using that "Jobs Created or Saved" comparison.
That was some funny .
It was, and you're right. How can someone really know with being able to see into an alternate universe where they took the other course of action.
You don't need a law to prohibit claims that have no evidence to support them. You have to have judges who are willing to enforce existing rules and laws (at least in the majority of American jurisdictions), which permit the imposition of sanctions (including the costs incurred by the defendant) upon those who bring frivolous suits.
Besides, I'm not sure exactly how the supposed lack of any evidence that the hospital did anything wrong can be determined before a lawsuit is filed. Are we going to have pre-suit screening committees that investigate the facts to assess whether there are any facts? Are we going to make the claimant go through an EEOC type approval process before filing a lawsuit?
The ultimate truth is that in 99.9% of instances, the person who brings a claim actually does so because he or she believes that there is at least some evidence of wrongdoing by the alleged tortfeasor.
The civil justice system employs mechanisms like summary judgments to ferret out whether there are facts to support the claims or not, or whether the facts that do exist are sufficient to allow the imposition of liability.
The idea of a law that somehow will prohibits the filing suits that have no basis in fact is silly because it ultimately depends upon a degree of objective pre-suit screening from people (those who do file frivolous suits) who are decidedly not objective about those facts.
The whole idea of hard, arbitrary caps for medical malpractice leading to catastrophic/terminal results seems fundamentally inequitable and perverse to me.
"hard, arbitrary caps for medical malpractice"
Perverse? You want perverse? how about Alan Simpson's "hard, arbitrary" cap for the percentage of GDP by govt spending.
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