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Originally posted by BRussell: But if the lawsuits weren't being won, there wouldn't be a need for limiting awards. There was a report a few years ago by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine called "To Err is Human," and it presented the case that I'm trying to make here: that there are way too many preventable medical errors. They result in probably 50,000 or more deaths in the US each year. Their case is that insitutional changes could greatly reduce these errors. IMO, the underlying problem is the resistance to implement safety-enhancing changes, not the lawsuits themselves. |
Just because a malpractice lawsuit is not won by the plantiff, doesn't mean that there is no cost to the medical-legal system.
It is often the case, malpractice lawyers will pull every doctor who has had contact with the plantiff (whether they had a part in the malpractice in question or not). Each of these doctors' malpractice insurance companies must now hire a lawyer to open a new file. Each time a file is opened it costs the insurance company $5000-$10000 per physician, which is passed on to the physician in higher malpractice insurance rates... even if the case is thrown out of court.
A fair way to do things.... if a plantiff who loses or gets his case thrown out had to pay the lawyers/legal fees for the defendant, And maybe "pain and sufferring" for the physician if found innocent, since the physician had to go through all of this. If the plantiff wins, then there is no cap and, as it is now, the defendant has to pay "pain and sufferring", all medical fees, and legal fees.