The two main problems are:
1. Unrealistic expectations of patients.
75 years ago, if you went into the hosptital, you probably weren’t walking out. There was just very little to do for patients that were really sick. These days though, we think that doctors should be able to diagnose and cure anything. We don’t realize it’s not like fixing a car, where you can keep trying until you get it right. So if a child is born with cerebral palsy, well the doctor should have prevented it.
2. Philosophy of entitlement.
People feel that if something doesn’t turn out they way they want, somebody owes them something. My child has cerebral palsy, so someone has to compensate me.
You would hope the legal system would effectively sort out the cases of bad results from the cases of true negligence. But they often don’t. The problem is the folks in the legal system don’t know enough about medicine to adequately judge these cases. One of the reasons guys become lawyers is they don’t like science.
So each side puts up a bunch of “expert witnesses” who present opposing views. The jury is left trying to decide who to believe – they certainly don’t know enough about medicine to evaluate the facts.
On top of that, they ask the jury to set damages. Really, how are you going to compensate someone whose child has cerebral palsy?
The way I would fix this is:
Set a limit on attorney fees so they don’t have such personal interest in filing suits.
Have malpractice trials judged by an arbitration panel staffed by people trained to evaluate scientific evidence. I think that would be a better way to sort out the real cases of negligent doctors.
To do this properly, I will need to be elected king of the world for life. If you leave this to congress, they will screw it up. Once elected, I will get to this problem as soon as I fix the NBA and tidy up the internet.
