Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: lazs2 on May 17, 2004, 10:47:13 AM
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I admit to not be up on this too much but it appears that most of the cost of healthcare in the U.S. is realated to malpractice insurance... Most doctors are paying at least an equal amount to malpractice insurance as they are earning. some pay a higher amount.
So... without malpractice suits it would seem that health care insurance would be very cheap and affordable.
Socialist countries have national health that is run by the government.. What happens in these countries when a drunk doctor kills a patient or leaves a sponge in em or removes the wrong testicle? does the national health patient making $5 an hour then sue the country/government for 100 million dollars and if so, how does the country afford this? Perhaps thier doctors don't get drunk or make mistakes?
Seems if the doctors here didn't pay such high rates the could work less and probly make fewer mistakes?
any thoughts or enlightenment on how it works for the socialist countries?
lazs
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http://www.vakes.fi/pvk/english/index.jsp
Finnish Patient Insurance Centre takes care of the compensation procedures of patient injuries that have occurred in Finland. Insurance companies engaged in patient insurance in Finland are members of the Centre.
Patient Insurance provides compensation for patients, who have incurred bodily injury in connection with medical treatment and health care.Claims for compensation are to be submitted to the Patient Insurance Centre
for claims assessment.
Thing is that in here you're not going to be millionaire if some doctor screws up the operation.
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I deal with this at work everyday. You have no idea the crap providers pull.
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Originally posted by SunKing
I deal with this at work everyday. You have no idea the crap providers pull.
Health insurance providers, or malpractice insurance providers?
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Two options on this.
1. Place limits on malpractice claims / awards. A chart for each type or class of injury could be made up and set, much like a sentencing chart for criminal judges.
2. Kill the plaintiffs attorney upon awarding a sum in excess of 2 million to the plaintiff. I bet the number of suits and award amounts would decline precipitously. ;) :p :D
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insurance rates are out of control but I don't know what could be done. if it was you or your family member and a Dr's negligence ruined your life, you'd expect to be compensated for what was taken from you.
it's easy to say limit the pay-outs, as long as you aren't the one who's been injured.
one thing may help some would be a restructuring on how attorneys are payed. around here (I assume it's similar elsewhere) the going rate is 30%, 40% if you go to court. thats pretty reasonable for claims under 50-100k, but if a person gets a $2M settlement and it never had to go to court, did the attorney really earn $600k?
this drives up the amount you'd need in a settlement since you are giving about 1/3 of it away, right off the bat.
I'm no expert on this but it would seem in the high dollar cases there should come a point where you look at how many hours are put in for how much $$ in fees. it should be a fairly high dollar amount because the attorney gets nothing if he puts in the work and the client gets nothing, so when you win you need to make enough to cover the time you put in when you didn't.
it's pretty easy to just blame the lawyers but behind every one of them is somebody who was injured by another's negligence and they deserve what compensation a jury deems fair.
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Theoretically, contingency fees ought to make settlements for less more frequent.
I think that part of the problem in the States is that juries get to award the damages (although I think it is possible to review the award on appeal).
Juries get so into the facts of the individual case, and thinking that insurance companies are 'rich', make these outrageously high awards in many cases. The result is higher premiums for the rest of you.
Ravs
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one thing that occurs to me is that when damages are set, insurance companies should be exempt from paying punitive damages. that should have to come out of the Dr's own pocket (or any defendant).
punitive damages are often much more than actual damages and can be set on a whim, with no actual damage needing to be proven to justify the amount.
the point of punitive damages is to punish the offender, how is he punished if his insurance company picks up the tab. it accomplishes nothing to penalize the insurance company, it's not their behavior that the damages are meant to change.
and what point is the negligent DR going to get if the punitive damages for his negligence are absorbed into the premiums of all the Dr's who practice in his field.
I also think that some Dr's might be a little extra careful if it where their home on the line.
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In addition to your point, apathy, juries would be less likely to award sky-high settlements if they knew that it was a single doctor they were hurting, not a big faceless corporation.
Might go a long way toward fairer settlements. Although then it'd get into a big pissing match of "make the jury feel sorrier for me."
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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.
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Absolutely, Myelo: the blame culture has a lot to answer for.
People trip over a paving stone these days and someone gets sued.
It's outrageous!
But I would say that......I'm a defence lawyer :)
Ravs
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Riddle me this Batman: When was the last time a Malpractice Insurance Company went out of business because they paid out too much? Too hard? OK, when was the last time a Malpractice Insurance Company cut CEO pay? See, it's all the victim's fault!:rolleyes:
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It's called running a 3 year liabilities book and increasing the premium, Robin.
Holy Business Decision!
Ravs
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Originally posted by ravells
It's called running a 3 year liabilities book and increasing the premium, Robin.
Holy Business Decision!
Ravs
And they send rebates after they overestimated? :lol
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Perish the thought! Those are hard earned profits!
Ravs
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I have no idea on a fix, but I was absolutely astonished to hear the following from a delivery nurse. Apparently there are about 7-10 babies delivered everyday in the town I live in. There used to be about 5-6 OBs. I was told this year their insurance coverage went up about $60,000 and all but two have had to give up their practice because they couldn't afford it, even with the overload of patients. Insurance is especially high for OBs because they can be sued for almost anything wrong with the child for the FIRST 21 YEARS of the kid's life. People filing frivelous lawsuits are driving doctors out of practice or out of country.
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Forgive my thickness...what is an OB? (other than a famous star wars character?)
Ravs
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Let's sue all the lawyers.
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Originally posted by ravells
Forgive my thickness...what is an OB? (other than a famous star wars character?)
Ravs
Obstetrician (sp?). Baby delivering doctor.
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Ah yes! of course. I was being thick.
They're callled that here too. As in OBs and Gynies.
Ravs
Ta Tarmac.
Ravs
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so... in finland you can't sue for enough to drive the country out of bussines.
Then why even consider socialism, or, national health? simply limit suits to what a socialist country would pay.
rpm seems to think that every hamburger flipper is entittled to millions if a doctor makes a mistake but I bet he wants national socialism for healthcare...
It doesn't seem that socialism could survive with our sue happy and greedy populace.
lazs