Wired Mesh

Mesh, would you mind explaining your views on the need for tort reform? I'm interested in hearing about what you experience on the flip side--I work for a Plaintiff's attorney who specializes in personal injury and worker's comp claims, which I realize are a little removed from medical malpractice, but I'm still curious about what you see in your field.

Short answer: Many doctors, particularly obstetricians, are being forced to simply close their practices because they can't afford the skyrocketing malpractice insurance. The doctors who can still afford it live in constant fear of their next lawsuit, which will drive their premiums through the stratosphere. High-risk obstetricians suffer the most from these lawsuits, since they volunteer to take on the cases that are most likely to end in birth defects, low birth weight and infant death. Most of these tragedies are simply unpreventable or, less frequently, are the simple result of the mother's poor general health or irresponsibility. (You don't want to know what methamphetamines can do to a fetus.) But medical plantiff lawyers -- like, I'm sad to say, a certain VP candidate -- have been eager to argue in court that, say, Down Syndrome was the fault of a physician.

President Bush has made reforming medical malpractice suits a touchstone of his domestic platform. Senator Kerry has not. That made up my mind.

and i invite anyone who is friends with mesh (what better credentials does one need?) to celebrate election night up in chicago (c'mon a flight will get you here in 2 hours) by watching Shichinin no samurai.

i feel you though, man. it was a strange feeling last night after thinking about the different angles and wavering between 'this really matters' to 'this really not-matters' poles of the spectrum to hang up the phone toward midnight having talked it out one last time for an hour, without a clear idea of what i'd decide today, walk through a sodden cold morning to a nearly deserted precinct, and buy myself some more time as i stood there and voted for all 70 or so judges on the ballot before flipping back to the first page and doing a little more staring.

it might be possible to follow things too closely.

what i think would be really interesting is having a samurai president. with a little something called the "american people" in the role of feudal lord to which the samurai was pledged in fealty and service. and the outfit beats a suit hands-down.

recap: subtitles. swords. sake. chicago, "not a battleground state" illinois. and have calm, non-screaming fun in the noog.

"it might be possible to follow things too closely."

I think it is, at least for me. I remember how, a couple years back, while distracted by some happy personal events, I completely lost track of national politics for a few months. That was nice. Maybe I should start ignoring the issues again.

Can Morris be the Samurai president? He'd be awesome. And everybody loves him.

Stay warm in Chicago. Drink Sake for me.

yaegashi. 2008.

platform: karaoke and legalized sake. (it is already? well, then: free.)

i don't remember if mokko is american-born, somehow me thinks not, but don't worry - i'm sure the good gov'nor of eastern hawaii will have found a way to amend the constitution by then.

and don't worry, a-dog, i'm a nationally-ranked pinch-drinker.

Mesh, I'm a little wary of continuing the tort reform discussion, mainly because I've never considered myself one who thrives on arguments. I guess this is my long response. However, the bulk of my paycheck comes from assisting in obtaining settlements for injured people. I took this job out of pure desperation, literally despising the fact that I was involving myself in the legal field, drawing all of this from the conservative world I grew up in where lawyers were dirty and hurt people must have done something to cause their pain, they should just accept it, stop trying to blame others and get something for nothing, and move on with their lives already. Well, I've been here three years now. I view things much differently. I work for a Christian attorney (who's a Republican to boot, which provides him immense frustration that he has unintentionally passed along to me, a fellow Republican), one of the godliest men that I have ever had the privilege of knowing. All of that unnecessary background to give you a little of my perspective.

I believe tort reform is a complicated issue. I can see where you're coming from. And obstectrics, in particular, poses its own set of medical problems. I truly cannot imagine what it's like to see men and women that you have learned to respect fight like hell to save lives, to do everything in their human power for their patients, and then watch as they get sued for every cent they're worth. Not to mention their malpractice insurance just so they can go to their offices everyday.

But these are my concerns. How much are these insurance companies actually paying out in jury verdicts and settlements to cause an increase in coverage? There's all this talk of tort reform, of frivolous lawsuits with astronomical verdicts and settlements, of skyrocketing insurance, etc., but how many actual cases-real names, real numbers-are there?

And what of the doctors themselves? Once again, I believe obstectricians are in a different sort of category-but please hear me out on this. What standards are they held to? Who do they report to? Yes, obviously, their patients. I understand that they're human. They make mistakes. Mistakes and negligence are two completely different things, though. Lawyers are human too. They make mistakes as well. Some of them make big ones. And some of them are unethical (ok, many of them are unethical). But lawyers get disbarred all the time. They get complained about, they get their licenses suspended, they can never again practice law. They are held responsible for the management of their cases, their clients, and even their personal lives (a few local attorneys have been disbarred for criminal behavior, etc.). I could be wrong on this (and please tell me if I am), but how many doctors have stopped practicing medicine because they've screwed up, it was their fault, and a higher power says--you need to find something else to do. People do expect too much out of doctors-but why is it that medicine seems to be this "untouchable" profession? They pay their malpractice insurance premium and all of a sudden there's a need for tort reform? Why are the lawyers the bad guys instead of the insurance companies?

I see the people who are injured. I listen to them when they cry on the phone--grown men, crying, because they have been hurt so badly by absolutely no fault of their own, they cannot work again, they cannot provide for their families, and they live in continual pain with limited physical abilities. Imagine being injured at your age in a state with settlement/verdict caps. You're in your early 20s, correct? The cap amount being discussed here in SC is $300,000. $300,000. You're severely injured-let's say you're a quadrapalegic. You would be entitled to receive a maximum of $300,000 for your injury. That's $300,000 to cover your medical bills, your future medical care and costs, your attorney's fees and expenses, and to cover your living expenses for the rest of your life. That's nothing. Nothing. Putting a price tag on walking, on taking care of your very personal needs, on having the ability to work--there's no amount of money that can buy those things. I believe, though, that people should be held financially responsible for running red lights, for failing to maintain safe workplaces, for improper lane changes, for giving high dosages of insulin to perfectly healthy, non-diabetic individuals recovering from routine medical procedures. I believe that in a small way I'm able to help our clients.

I could probably ramble further, but I'm not sure how much sense I'm making. Those are my thoughts and a few of the things I encounter any given workday.

Mesh, you and I are going to have to battle this one out in person some time, ok, not really battle it out but i love talking about it. Now, i've got three inlaws that are doctors (1 surgeon, 1 OB/GYN, and 1 pediatrician), and they all love to give me a hard time. Ok, I'll spit out a bit of my argument right now so you can toss it around. First, maybe something does need to be done to ease the malpractice litigation. The sticky part is what? Who is causing the problem of the high premiums charged by insurance companies? Attorney's are the easy target, but I think that's the weakest argument (I won't get into all the reasons why just now). Let me jump to the "fix" that most people advocate - the "cap" on damages (which, in the Bills I've seen, weren't limited to Med. Mal. but applied to all torts). That is the worst idea possible and doesn't even address the problem most people complain about - frivolous suits. Who does a cap hurt the most and help the most, and who is completely unaffected by it? A cap will hurt the people who have been injured the most by bad Dr. and will help the Dr. that made a huge mistake. Say a Dr. messes up and cuts off the wrong limb (yes, this happens way too much...side note, an Attny that made a mistake this bad would loose his job, but not Drs.), now the patient is has no feet instead of just one, he will never walk again for the remainder of his life. Should we cap his damages to only 300,000? NO! Say I'm walking across the street and someone hits me w/ their car, I'm a quadriplegic now, in a wheelchair for life blowing on a straw to move, and will require Millions of dollars of medical treatment/living adjustments for the reamainder of my life. Should I be limited to only recovering $500,000? NO!! Caps hurt the people hurt the most and let the people that did the most damage off the hook. On the other hand, the frivolous suit which really has no basis and will be settled for $75,000 isn't even affected by the cap, and that's the problem the Tort reform was supposed to fix. So, a cap isn't the answer. Spinning off of what Heidi said about Dr. not loosing their licenses...once someone gets into Med. school, the school will carry them along and make sure they graduate even if they're a very poor student. My incoming class was around just below 220 students, we are now down around 185 or lower. If we didn't have a 70% GPA after the first year, we were gone. Point being, the Medical profession has a problem keeping bad Drs around too long and it starts in med. school. The last thing I'll toss at you is this; what do Insurance companies do w/ premiums that they receive from Dr. (and Attnys too)? They invest in the stock market! My corporations prof. is on the Board of TIAA-CREF, one of the companies that handles investments for pension funds, insurance companies, and the like. If Drs. would just take the time to look back over their records, they'd notice that their premiums go up when the stock market goes down. Why? B/c the insurance company just lost a butt load and needs to make up for it. So go complain to them. Who do you think is driving this big Tort reform push...the insurance companies. Dr. asks ins comp, "why are my premiums going up?" ins comp says "damn lawyers are suiting everyone and your premiums are going to pay for it"; of coarse that's what they're going to say. They're not going to say "b/c we lost all your money in the stock market." On top of that, of coarse the Ins. comp will scream "tort reform" every chance they get b/c they don't want to pay claims. Just ask Josiah about how hard it is to get an Ins. company to pay even when they accept liability. As you can see, I love to scream back...but if it ever comes up on conversation I'll try to keep my excitement harnessed (the Drs. in my family get the full blow every time they start yappin' at me about this stuff).

Oh, yeah..."hey, how's it goin'?"