| 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. |