It is obvious that America’s healthcare system is in the dumps, yet President Obama stresses that every citizen deserves affordable healthcare. If he is really serious about making healthcare affordable, then all he needs to do to start fixing the problem is to take one easy step.
Putting a monetary cap on the pain and suffering part of a medical malpractice suit (while leaving the rest unlimited) will allow doctor’s to pay less insurance cost. With doctors paying less insurance, they will be able start providing affordable health care, instead of passing the rate increase off to patients.
In a 2003 report, the General Accounting Office, which is the auditing and investigative arm of the U.S. congress, found that “losses on medical malpractice claims, which make up the largest part of insurers’ costs, appear to be the primary driver of rate increases in the long run.”
States like Texas (and California) have figured this out and from 2003 to 2005, Texas passed legislation to reform the way malpractice suits were handled. With the influx of doctors fleeing from other states, there are now over 30 insurance companies in Texas competing for business, which is driving rates down.
If you’re still not convinced, let me walk you through some reasons why a cap would be the best and fairest thing for Obama to do.
First and foremost, a cap would eliminate frivolous lawsuits that are a chief cause for rising healthcare costs. Who is supposed to decide what a broken arm is worth? Is it $100,000? Or $200,000? How does one measure mental suffering? A cap would somewhat relieve the responsibility of a supposedly impartial jury by limiting the damages awarded for pain to reasonable amounts.
How is an impartial jury (that’s made up of emotional human beings) supposed to believe this ‘rich’ doctor and insurance company when they feel so sympathetic for the plaintiff who was wheeled out on a body cast?
On a side note, this is how 2008 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards made his fortune. As a trial lawyer the majority of his cases would be about medical malpractice. His most notable cases would involve suing doctors charging them with mistakes when a kid was born with cerebral palsy, even though the disease is multifactorial. Interesting note though is that Edwards would very rarely take a case in which the child died, most likely because he then couldn’t parade the child in front of the jury and receive an emotional verdict.
Although sympathy is justified, it leads the jury down the road of rewarding a tremendously unfair verdict. The fact that medicine is not a perfect science doesn’t help either. Two very good doctors may come to different conclusions on the same case. Juries may believe they are punishing the doctor for his mistake, when in reality it could have easily been made by the next doctor.
If the president puts a cap on the monetary rewards for pain and suffering there is still no limit on the amount one can receive on lost wages and medical bills. The persons will still be compensated for any cost relating to the injury for the rest of their life.
We are now starting to see a shortage of medical professionals. Doctors are simply retiring or quitting their jobs to avoid paying the insurance cost which can be up to $200,000 a year depending on a doctor’s specialty. One side effect of this is doctors are less likely to open small clinics because they cannot afford that much overhead from the start. They now are more likely to work in large hospitals making them more aloof and distant. Access to healthcare is more difficult because of malpractice, as obstetric gynecology physicians (OB/GYN) often give up obstetrics (which they enjoy) and solely practice gynecology because of the lower malpractice risk.
Have you ever thought of why doctors choose their profession? More often than not it’s not because they wanted to make lots of money, but because they actually cared for people (gasp!) and wanted to cure them. Unfortunately, if they are not able to take on the added insurance cost the doctor who wants to provide for the sick and poor in his/her community may not be able to. How has it become acceptable to live in a society that has so many qualified doctors while still so many uninsured people?
If you’re like me then you’re a fan of the movie Tommy Boy. And thanks to David Spade we all know that the only people who go to college for ‘a shade under a decade’ is any character played by Chris Farley, and doctors. The fact that doctors undergo such an intense education and certification process ensures that in this society, bad doctors are few and far between. We don’t need these lawsuits to ensure that bad doctors are penalized; As previously stated medicine is an inexact science the chance that any doctor could make a mistake is probably in the same likelihood as any other doctor in his field. In fact the word medical mistake is actually a misnomer. A ‘mistake’ is rather a known risk and then a subsequent complication. Lawsuits cannot be viewed as the start of the Darwinian process of weeding out doctors; that process starts way before then.
This current system is also flawed because it penalizes any doctor who has had a mistake-free career. It’s sad that they have to pay millions of dollars in malpractice insurance for something they never did. Unfortunately for them and us a few mistakes by bad doctors forces the mistake-free ones to pay unequal amounts.
Out of all these reasons the one I find the most disheartening is that, in the current system, doctors no longer focusing on healing a patient but they rather focus on defensive medicine. In other words, getting sued, is such a frightening thought for a doctor that they no longer have the best interest of the patient in mind. Rather they take all the necessary steps to ensure that they don’t get sued. Instead of just treating a patient for the flu doctor’s now order expensive blood tests just to rule out rare and unusual diseases. These tests will cost the patient a lot more money and if that patient is not insured and cannot pay the bill, we’ll pay the rest of it in hidden taxes.
So from now on when you see these million dollar lawsuits against doctors for malpractice you either think that the plaintiffs struggle is justified or you see the doctors as the victim, just remember in the end though we are all victims. It’s time for Obama to change that.