> Sam wrote: > Average malpractice awards have tripled to $3.5 > million since 1994, driving medical liability > insurance premiums up over 500 percent.
As I understand it, malpractice insurance isn't tied to an individual doctor. Rather, all doctors pay for the awards. This means that each doctor isn't held responsible for his/her actions. It's like no fault plus plus car insurance - when accidents happen all doctors pay. This creates an incentive problem - bad doctors aren't identified nor do their costs go up any more than other doctors. Therefore adding an award cap just penalizes legitimate plaintiffs while rewarding bad doctors. Here's a great example of why there should be no lawsuit cap: My cousin's wife was delivering their baby and needed a Cesarean. They gave her the drugs and started cutting but she began screaming and screaming and so they kept giving her more drugs. The doctor was panicking and didn't understand why the drug wasn't working - meanwhile the poor girl was bleeding all over the place. My cousin starting looking under the bed at all the tubes and found 2 kinked. He pointed this out to the doctor who then unkinked them sending a massive dose of drugs into my cousin's wife who promptly passed out and almost died. Had she died, that would've definitely been a case of malpractice. I thought it still should be even though she didn't. A lawsuit cap puts a price on her life and doesn't allow the courts to send a message to Doctors that they better be through and bad doctors aren't tolerated. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| The annual ColdFusion User Conference is being held Sat 6/26 - Sun 6/27/04 8am-5pm in the Washington DC Area. http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=44 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:132810 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
