[restuijs]

People should be able to sue. It's the only natural incentive for good practice. Otherwise there's no consequences for poor practice.

On the other hand, people should also be able to lose those lawsuits, and should also be able to sue for unnecessary preventative procedure, and the basis of winning or losing should be based on empirical evidence pertaining to risk.

Insurance isn't the problem, nor are malpractice lawsuits. It's the inherent risk in the field. Malpractice issues are greatly overstated in health care debates.

[rscho]

Well, from what I see in the US, the risk to be sued actually encourages a lot more damaging procedures than it makes people rigorous. That's not to say people shouldn't be allowed to sue. Actually, there is really no good solution to this problem.

The best situation I have seen is where people do sue, but hospitals provide legal protection for their employees (public sector in western Europe). Employees there still fear for their jobs, but not enough to put patients through nearly as much useless and risky crap as in the US. Patients there are also far less prone to sue, since the success rate of legal action is low. All in all, everyone seems to benefit from a little less tension in the system.

Of course, you will always find people who feel (perhaps rightly so) that they were wronged, and that we should cut the hands of the bad docs. Finding balance in those matters is a difficult social exercise.

[bob_theslob646]

"empirical evidence pertaining to risk."

This is a good point, I concur.

I agree doctors should be held accountable, but it is not the case in the U.S.

This article does a great job explaining the issue about malpractice in the U.S.

I have no idea whether malpractice is overblown, but I do know that it doesn't prevent bad doctors from practicing.

(https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a1f4595e4b0dff40be0362f)

>"Our current malpractice system doesn’t work. Why? Because 90 percent or more of malpractice cases don’t even go to court. And the amount of money – and it is vast – that is attached to this “medical malpractice settlement industry,” if you will, is divvied up in such a way that much of it doesn’t reach the patient. It goes to lawyers, it goes to the courts, and it goes to so-called experts who testify on behalf of the defendant or the plaintiff."

[halestock]

It's certainly not the only incentive for good behavior, and I don't think adding more lawsuits to the mix is the solution. The proper incentive is having a medical board which has the power to discipline, and can do so without acting on emotion or greed, which presumably is the source of many lawsuits.

[Angostura]

> It's the only natural incentive for good practice.

What about the whole hypocratic oath thing? Or isn't that natural?

[pasbesoin]

And from my perspective, regarding "tort reform" with respect to medical malpractice, I'm against the caps.

Because the doctor/hospital side -- further backed by insurance -- typically has much more power and inertia than the patient. And these reforms add often quite severe limits that don't actually cover some or many patients' actual damages (cost of continuing care alone, not to mention quality of life).

Absent meaningful penalties, mistakes become just "a cost of doing business" and there may be little incentive to actually fix them. Or to punish the chronic bumbler -- where bumbler can actually mean de facto criminal negligence (in the eyes of reasonable people, regardless of legal outcome).

AND, that's what an awful lot of what intersects "white collar" and "business" comes down to, in the U.S. Money. It's our often poor substitute for real justice -- and for being more proactive to prevent problems before they happen (e.g. by spending smaller sums, up front, to better the process)

I'd be more supportive of a... "more rational" system of compensation, if ongoing care were guaranteed. The medical accident doesn't mean you will end up un-insurable. Or even on the street or in a family members bedroom or on a friend's couch, because you can no longer work in your career.

If it were a real medical system that pro-actively worked to improve itself, minimize mistakes and bad behavior, take responsibility for its outcomes, and provide ongoing care. Instead of limited fee for service transactions, regardless of the quality of said service.

All the more so as medical networks grow into behemoths (even if that was promoted to some degree by the insurance and legal systems), they employ tremendous legal resources on behalf of their own interests. Legislatively limiting the other side's leverage in dealing with them? No, thanks.

P.S. I may be mistaken, but I have a recollection of reporting on this... maybe 5-ish years ago, or a bit more. Study of malpractice settlements and judgments found that most were not outrageous and sought to meet the real resultant needs and injuries of the plaintiffs.

The "big payout", "ballooning expenses" story was/is to some significant degree manufactured. Citing extreme, outlying cases that are a small minority of what's really going on.

That is, the story has a political basis. The agenda of certain self-serving interests.

Whichever side you're on, with regard to "tort reform" with respect to medical malpractice, I think we all need to see the complete and unvarnished numbers. Settlements as well as judgments.

Again, the secrecy surrounding this is not doing us, the public, any good. With actually, comprehensive data, perhaps we could come closer to an agreement on policy, regulation, and legislation, in this area.