When Hell Freezes Over

[vroom]

You know, there are flip side issues on these questions sometimes.

For example, for people to be productive members of the workforce, earning wages and paying taxes, they need to have some level of health.

Now, admittedly, as described above, there are serious problems with the health care system as it is currently, I’m not trying to suggest otherwise.

Just keep an open mind and look at the wider issues from a larger socio-economic viewpoint and consider the pros and cons from all sides, don’t just pick your party line and be whatever you are supposed to be.

As with social programs in other threads, I’d suggest that keeping people in the workforce, instead of sick and dying, is one way to look at health care. How do we maximize the abilty of everyone to contribute to the economy and pay lots of tax?

[GDollars37]

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
I’ve been giving this issue alot of thought lately actually. Isn’t the system we have now actually a crappy version of “national” health care? I think so.

No patient can be turned away from any hospital for treatment ever; couple that with medicare, medicaid, and a prescription drug benefit, doesn’t that damn near give us “national” health care? Like I said, I think so. The problem is that the system is crappy.

Some of the questions that I haven’t been able to answer are related to how to keep costs down. I see alot folks who abuse the system all the time. Going to the emergency room for aspirin, calling the ambulance and the fire dept. because their knee hurts, going into the emergency room to get a damn band-aid. Even coming up with bullshit reasons to go to the hospital to use the ambulance as a taxi to where they want to go.

While nobody has a right to a job, I’m starting to think that we all have a right to quality health care. We just have to come up with a decent system of delivering it.

So, as soon as I figure this whole thing out, I’ll post it

Bigflamer
[/quote]

I feel the exact same way.

[ExNole]

Anyone consider why having a whole bunch of poor people without access to proper medicine could be a bad thing?

A whole population to incubate diseases they can’t afford to get rid of?

[AZMojo]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
A concern:

… Insurance should be insurance against unforeseen calamity, not healthy people paying for the choices made by unhealthy people.

[/quote]

This just about sums the whole thing up.
Being self-employed, one of the things that aggrevates me most is the price of independant health coverage. There simply is no such thing as a realistic catastrophe only plan. Sure, there are a few 5-10K deductible plans out there, but those aren’t cheap either.

I would love for somebody to forward me a link to an inexpensive emergency only plan, with a reasonable deductible. I don’t generally go to the doctor, or believe they serve much purpose beyond diagnosis and emergency medicine. Is there a plan out there geared toward healthy people who don’t run to the doctor everytime they get the sniffles? If so, please let me in the loop.

[hspder]

[quote]AZMojo wrote:
Is there a plan out there geared toward healthy people who don’t run to the doctor everytime they get the sniffles?[/quote]

That defies the whole principle behind insurance. Insurance is about shared risk.

There are different premiums depending on your individual risk (i.e., higher premiums for people who have type II diabetes, previous heart problems, etc.), but unfortunately that does not compensate for the absurd health costs for even a regular visit to the doctor.

In fact, people that do NOT go to the doctor regularly are, statistically, in much higher risk of having an extremely expensive “health catastrophe”, so you would – again, statistically – much more of a risk to the insurance companies than a guy that goes to his PCP every 6 months for a checkup and catches any small problems at a point where treatment is cheap.

Most insurance companies actively try to prevent abuse and have campaigns for healthier living (Kaiser Permanente, an HMO, spends millions of dollars over here in CA in those campaigns), but clearly it’s not working. People are dumb, telling them how to live better won’t work.

SOMEBODY has to pay for their unhealthy choices, unless you go Headhunter’s route and just leave them to rot. However, being that the Western World’s culture is permeated by the fundamental Christian principle of helping those in need, that’s not gonna happen. We are taught since young kids that the “right thing to do” is to help those in need of help, rather than judging and telling them “it’s your fault, deal with it”.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that Christian doctrine – on the contrary, it is my firm belief that is one of the most valuable parts of Christianity, one that, in fact, has allowed the Western world to survive and even prosper rather than completely and permanently self-destruct.

Even though I am an atheist, I’ll be the first to agree that Jesus was a very wise man.

The way they have prevented this problem in Northern Europe is through severe regulation on anything that affects people’s health – like strict workplace laws (to prevent people from overworking or otherwise having unhealthy work environments), regulation on the quality of air and water, plus regulation of school and restaurant meals (e.g., in Denmark there are strict laws on how much trans fat a meal sold at a restaurant can have), etc. But you know as well as I do that’s not gonna happen here, since that’s “too Socialist”.

[hspder]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Your posts on this issue have been incredible. There is nothing I disagree with. Our current health care system forces doctors to be “Mc Donald’s care givers”. Until the general public realizes that the current system is NOT in their best interest other than possibly financially depending on the insurance company, there will be little expected change. If a doctor spends 6 hours treating one case but gets paid the same as he would a 25 min work up, I’ll leave that up to the reader how that affects the mood of that physician.[/quote]

lothario1132 and Professor X:

I fully empathize with your plight, but before this gets too much off topic, I have a few questions for you:

1. What series of events do you believe lead to this problem (VERY specific to the US)? Was it the ability to sue doctors so easily? Was it the insurance companies? Was it the culture? Is it the fact that doctors, even left to their own devices, make mistakes in abundance and the consequences are extremely serious? All of the above?

2. What solutions do you propose to get out of this situation, and allow the good doctors to become “healers” again, while keeping the incompetent doctors in check? Or at least go in the right direction?

3. Taking the above problems in consideration, don’t you believe Universal Health insurance – even as a stopgap measure – is still necessary to prevent the problem from getting completely out of control?

4. How do you feel that the inability of this country’s education system of producing sufficient numbers of doctors and nurses plays into this? How would you fix that (i.e., how would you increase the “output”)? Would that help and how?

[larryb]

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
Some of the questions that I haven’t been able to answer are related to how to keep costs down. I see alot folks who abuse the system all the time. Going to the emergency room for aspirin, calling the ambulance and the fire dept. because their knee hurts, going into the emergency room to get a damn band-aid.[/quote]

I can’t understand why ERs don’t make these people wait until all those with real emergencies are taken care of. They seem to use only two categories for prioritizing patients, “certain to die if we don’t do anything” and “everyone else”. Stitch me up first, then take care of the kids with the runny noses.

[En_Sabah_Nur]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
En Sabah Nur wrote:

So someone who has a better insurance plan will have to pay more for the same treatment than someone who has a lesser insurance plan, is that what you’re saying? And someone who has a lesser insurance plan doesn’t get the same “standard of care?”

That’s not what he wrote as far as “standard of care”. All patients receieve the same standard of care. The reason is, the doc has to cover his ass. You may not actually need a full x-ray series, but because you are likely to sue if he misses anything at all including anything unrelated to what you came in for, he checks for EVERYTHING. Some is just the basic act of being thourough, while some is simply the act of protecting himself from potential lawsuit considering patients try to sue for any and everything.
[/quote]

But isn’t it better to check for everything in case a particular ailment is complicated by something else? Not trying to question your knowledge as a doctor or anything…

Although I’m sure a lot of the extra stuff wouldn’t be needed if everyone went and got a checkup\physical every once in awhile…

[Professor_X]

[quote]En Sabah Nur wrote:
Professor X wrote:
En Sabah Nur wrote:

So someone who has a better insurance plan will have to pay more for the same treatment than someone who has a lesser insurance plan, is that what you’re saying? And someone who has a lesser insurance plan doesn’t get the same “standard of care?”

That’s not what he wrote as far as “standard of care”. All patients receieve the same standard of care. The reason is, the doc has to cover his ass. You may not actually need a full x-ray series, but because you are likely to sue if he misses anything at all including anything unrelated to what you came in for, he checks for EVERYTHING. Some is just the basic act of being thourough, while some is simply the act of protecting himself from potential lawsuit considering patients try to sue for any and everything.

But isn’t it better to check for everything in case a particular ailment is complicated by something else? Not trying to question your knowledge as a doctor or anything…

Although I’m sure a lot of the extra stuff wouldn’t be needed if everyone went and got a checkup\physical every once in awhile…
[/quote]

You kind of answered the question. If someone was going to the doctor regularly, no, it would not be necessary. The same with going to the dentist. Most people only go when they have let a problem get well beyond “minor treatment stage”. Yes, most docs will do exams and tests to discover any disease process. That is part of the “standard of care”.

[Professor_X]

[quote]hspder wrote:
lothario1132 and Professor X:

I fully empathize with your plight, but before this gets too much off topic, I have a few questions for you:

1. What series of events do you believe lead to this problem (VERY specific to the US)? Was it the ability to sue doctors so easily? Was it the insurance companies? Was it the culture? Is it the fact that doctors, even left to their own devices, make mistakes in abundance and the consequences are extremely serious? All of the above?[/quote]

It was a combination of all of the above. You have people suing doctors because they didn’t like how they spoke to them. It has gotten out of hand. If that then leads to docs having to spend large chunks of their income on malpractice insurance, you end up with a growing problem…which is many docs leaving the field of health care. We now have many lower class (and some middle class) who can’t afford serious health care. John Q. with Denzel Washington did a great job of showing how much of a problem it is. You may want to check out that movie if you haven’t.

[quote]
2. What solutions do you propose to get out of this situation, and allow the good doctors to become “healers” again, while keeping the incompetent doctors in check? Or at least go in the right direction? [/quote]

Is the problem really “incompetent doctors” or people who don’t ever see a doctor until there is a major disease process? It is up to patients to be more active from day to day in terms of their own health instead of waiting until something has gotten nearly out of hand and then pouting because their doctor didn’t “prevent” it somehow. Your doctor isn’t perfect. No human is.

[quote]
3. Taking the above problems in consideration, don’t you believe Universal Health insurance – even as a stopgap measure – is still necessary to prevent the problem from getting completely out of control?[/quote]

I think all Americans should be entitled to health care and I think the major problem is insurance companies. Maybe the answer is in taxes for “Universal Health care” and a destruction of insurance companies.

4. How do you feel that the inability of this country’s education system of producing sufficient numbers of doctors and nurses plays into this? How would you fix that (i.e., how would you increase the “output”)? Would that help and how?

I have no clue what the numbers are for doctors or nurses. A few people on this board know what my field of practice is. I generally don’t go into detail on the board simply out of privacy for myself. There will always be ebbs and flows as far as the population of doctors, dentists, vets and chiros. The numbers will grow if the fields are seen as lucrative and financially stable. When it comes to medicine, there are many doctors who don’t feel that the pay off matches the stress. When you start losing good doctors because of a system of health care that doesn’t work, everyone fails.

[AZMojo]

[quote]hspder wrote:
AZMojo wrote:
Is there a plan out there geared toward healthy people who don’t run to the doctor everytime they get the sniffles?

That defies the whole principle behind insurance. Insurance is about shared risk.

There are different premiums depending on your individual risk (i.e., higher premiums for people who have type II diabetes, previous heart problems, etc.), but unfortunately that does not compensate for the absurd health costs for even a regular visit to the doctor.

In fact, people that do NOT go to the doctor regularly are, statistically, in much higher risk of having an extremely expensive “health catastrophe”, so you would – again, statistically – much more of a risk to the insurance companies than a guy that goes to his PCP every 6 months for a checkup and catches any small problems at a point where treatment is cheap.

Most insurance companies actively try to prevent abuse and have campaigns for healthier living (Kaiser Permanente, an HMO, spends millions of dollars over here in CA in those campaigns), but clearly it’s not working. People are dumb, telling them how to live better won’t work.

SOMEBODY has to pay for their unhealthy choices, unless you go Headhunter’s route and just leave them to rot. However, being that the Western World’s culture is permeated by the fundamental Christian principle of helping those in need, that’s not gonna happen. We are taught since young kids that the “right thing to do” is to help those in need of help, rather than judging and telling them “it’s your fault, deal with it”.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that Christian doctrine – on the contrary, it is my firm belief that is one of the most valuable parts of Christianity, one that, in fact, has allowed the Western world to survive and even prosper rather than completely and permanently self-destruct.

Even though I am an atheist, I’ll be the first to agree that Jesus was a very wise man.

The way they have prevented this problem in Northern Europe is through severe regulation on anything that affects people’s health – like strict workplace laws (to prevent people from overworking or otherwise having unhealthy work environments), regulation on the quality of air and water, plus regulation of school and restaurant meals (e.g., in Denmark there are strict laws on how much trans fat a meal sold at a restaurant can have), etc. But you know as well as I do that’s not gonna happen here, since that’s “too Socialist”.
[/quote]

I understand that insurance is about shared risk. I think carriers make up for the losses in their group plans, where people DON’T pay more for their increased risk, through the individual plans. Each plan should be self-sufficient, and not try to make up for the deficiencies of another line of business.

Maybe a government controlled health care system is the way to go. That way, while we all share the same risks, costs could be controlled and their is no incentive on the government’s part to make a profit, unlike when business is in control of things.
I think the European model looks pretty good, as do most European models.

So, I guess on this point, like most, I hold the complete opposite view of Headhunter.

[hspder]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
John Q. with Denzel Washington did a great job of showing how much of a problem it is. You may want to check out that movie if you haven’t.[/quote]

I will definitely put that movie on my Netflix queue…

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Is the problem really “incompetent doctors” or people who don’t ever see a doctor until there is a major disease process? It is up to patients to be more active from day to day in terms of their own health instead of waiting until something has gotten nearly out of hand and then pouting because their doctor didn’t “prevent” it somehow. Your doctor isn’t perfect. No human is.[/quote]

Well, my post to AZMojo clearly shows that I’m in complete agreement that going to the doctor regularly decreases your risk tremendously. And, personally, I go to my PCP for checkups every 6 months, and I drag my wife with me. She also visits the ObGyn every 6 months. And we both also go to the Dentist every year.

HOWEVER – and PLEASE don’t take this personally – I think we absolutely need to have mechanisms in place to protect people from bad doctors. Yes, nobody is perfect, and doctors are no worse than other professionals, but the consequences of a mistake are more serious than quite possibly anybody else’s. No, it is not fair to hold them to a higher standard, but, again, what is the solution to this? I really don’t know, so any suggestions are more than welcome.

[quote]Professor X wrote:
I think all Americans should be entitled to health care and I think the major problem is insurance companies. Maybe the answer is in taxes for “Universal Health care” and a destruction of insurance companies.[/quote]

Exactly. Couldn’t agree more.

[quote]Professor X wrote:
I have no clue what the numbers are for doctors or nurses. [/quote]

OK, so let me explain where I was going with this – over here in California, for example, there are literally thousands of people in waiting lists to enter Nursing programs. The problem is not lack of people wanting to be nurses, it’s lack of “bandwidth” to teach all the people that want to become nurses.

In other States I am aware of – like Colorado and Oregon – I was told the situation is the same.

w/r/t medical school, the problem seems to be a combination of tuition and entrance requirements; there are many people who want to be doctors but cannot either because they cannot afford the tuition costs over such an extended period of time (first to meet the entrance requirements, then for the actual Med School). The length of the actual Med School part of things doesn’t make it easier.

Basically, my point is that there was a strong investment in this – by providing subsidies to colleges to teach more nurses, and cheaper and easier loans/scholarships to people who wanted to go into Med School, to sustain them for the long period of time – we would have many more nurses and doctors.

Would that, in your opinion, help? How? If not, why?

[Professor_X]

[quote]hspder wrote:
Basically, my point is that there was a strong investment in this – by providing subsidies to colleges to teach more nurses, and cheaper and easier loans/scholarships to people who wanted to go into Med School, to sustain them for the long period of time – we would have many more nurses and doctors.

Would that, in your opinion, help? How? If not, why?
[/quote]

I truly don’t think there is much of a problem with the numbers of health care professionals being produced now. The ONLY number I am concerned about at all is the number of minorities who have that as an option or who make it passed college level to even make that choice in the first place. If there is a “shortage”, that would be where it is. Again, I see three major problems. One of those is the sue happy society we all have created. The second is the effect that insurance companies truly have on health care and the advancement of medicine. The last is the effect that pharmaceutical companies have over the entire medical field as far as actually holding BACK progress.

[zarathus]

It’s quite a thorny issue.

Moral hazard is a problem, but isn’t it just the same problem under the current system? There is no large disincentive under the current system to prevent people from eating McD’s and chain smoking all day, and as such they bog down the system more than they contribute to it (a contribution would be considered as being healthier than normal or healthier than the average cost of care, I guess).

It seems really difficult to distinguish the current system from state capitalism, in that there is little competition. What was the last innovation the HMO system made, besides making you fill out your medical industry in triplicate?

[lothario1132]

[quote]hspder wrote:
lothario1132 and Professor X:

I fully empathize with your plight, but before this gets too much off topic, I have a few questions for you:

1. What series of events do you believe lead to this problem (VERY specific to the US)? Was it the ability to sue doctors so easily? Was it the insurance companies? Was it the culture? Is it the fact that doctors, even left to their own devices, make mistakes in abundance and the consequences are extremely serious? All of the above?[/quote]
   Some good questions here. I’m gonna have to go along with the good professor on number one here. I can’t imagine that there was any one particular factor which did this; perhaps our system has been flawed from the get-go when medicare was created. Couple this with a drastic increase in our patient population, and an average american lifestyle which has grown more and more sedentary… honestly, I don’t see how this COULDN’T have happened.

2. What solutions do you propose to get out of this situation, and allow the good doctors to become “healers” again, while keeping the incompetent doctors in check? Or at least go in the right direction?

Step one: kill all lawyers.

LOL Just kidding… Actually, I’m not. I figure if we can get about one out of ten people to go out and choke just one ambulance-chaser a day, we could have this thing licked in like two weeks.

Seriously though, the idea of the standard of care started out as a good idea. Why shouldn’t everybody be entitled to the same treatment options, and be treated as equals? We can go back to the civil rights movement and say what a good plan to prevent discrimination based on race, gender, etc. It’s just a shame that it kinda backfired when the legal responsibility fell not on the patient, but the doctor. It was surmised that this was just common sense; i.e., let’s get the really smart and highly-trained medical professionals to be in charge of this, right?

But as with any kind of risk and liability issue, we create a vulnerability to massive litigation (we’re talking life and death in some cases here, there’s a lot at stake), and thus the “malpractice insurance” was born.

Dammit if this whole thing just hasn’t fucked us all over, though. This is what I said in my first post here. The root of the problem lies in making someone else, no matter how smart or well-trained, responsible for your personal wellbeing. I’m not saying get rid of liabilty in gross incompetence, e.g., oops I left a scalpel inside of my patient during surgery, and now they’re all messed up… I’m just saying that this idea of liability has grown into some kind of crazy beast that doesn’t make sense anymore. Patients, encouraged by liars, oops I mean lawyers (hehe), think they can just fire off any kind of lawsuit no matter how ridiculous or asinine. This is somehow socially acceptable behavior now. We have become a nation of selfish unthinking assholes. I blame Jerry Springer.

The ER docs here put up with bullshit legal challenges all the time. Y’all may not be surprised to hear that the biggest billboards in Tallahassee feature medical malpractice lawyer assholes bragging about how awesome they are. Look on the back cover of any phone book… is there an ad for a bunch of guys in suits?

3. Taking the above problems in consideration, don’t you believe Universal Health insurance – even as a stopgap measure – is still necessary to prevent the problem from getting completely out of control?

It’s a fun idea to think about, but remember where we are. There are powerful men with a great deal to lose if the universal health care a la Canada would come to pass. Try to imagine the vast quantity of money which flows through the hands of insurance companies today. I will restate that it is my belief that something critical is going to have to break before anything changes.

[quote]4. How do you feel that the inability of this country’s education system of producing sufficient numbers of doctors and nurses plays into this? How would you fix that (i.e., how would you increase the “output”)? Would that help and how?
[/quote]
It can be argued that there aren’t massive shortages of doctors, at least in Tallahassee. I guess it depends on where you are, but I don’t see too many overworked doctors around here. They stay busy, but not to the point of being suicidal… so far. Still, the trend here is for doctors to go as fast as possible, so maybe that’s just creating the illusion that all is well as can be expected.

I would say that there IS a definite shortage of nurses around here, however. This is being handled as best as we can hope for, so I wouldn’t change much about this. Being a full-time nurse pays fairly good here in Florida. The schools are full, and turn out decent people on a regular basis.

Fun topic, huh?

[lothario1132]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
I truly don’t think there is much of a problem with the numbers of health care professionals being produced now. The ONLY number I am concerned about at all is the number of minorities who have that as an option or who make it passed college level to even make that choice in the first place. If there is a “shortage”, that would be where it is. Again, I see three major problems. One of those is the sue happy society we all have created. The second is the effect that insurance companies truly have on health care and the advancement of medicine. The last is the effect that pharmaceutical companies have over the entire medical field as far as actually holding BACK progress.
[/quote]

This post is money. For everybody following this thread, please re-read.

An interesting sidenote to the minority interest part above:

I work with each new year’s worth of medical interns and what I am seeing is a massive increase in folks from other countries getting into our medical school. I would say that english is a second language to over half of this year’s crop of promising young doctors. And most of the women (about half of the class) are hot as shit.

Lothario fun fact #34: It is tricky to listen to a beautiful woman with a sexy accent, and simultaneously decipher her broken english while trying to hide a burgeoning erection.

Just so y’all know.

[lothario1132]

[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
But as with any kind of risk and liability issue, we create a vulnerability to massive litigation (we’re talking life and death in some cases here, there’s a lot at stake), and thus the “malpractice insurance” was born.

Dammit if this whole thing just hasn’t fucked us all over, though. This is what I said in my first post here. The root of the problem lies in making someone else, no matter how smart or well-trained, responsible for your personal wellbeing. I’m not saying get rid of liabilty in gross incompetence, e.g., oops I left a scalpel inside of my patient during surgery, and now they’re all messed up… I’m just saying that this idea of liability has grown into some kind of crazy beast that doesn’t make sense anymore.[/quote]

I was re-reading my earlier post and realized that I should probably clarify what I’m trying to say here.

Please understand that most (around 70%) of medical malpractice lawsuits are considered frivolous. If a physician is dragged to court, he wins 80% of the time.

Some studies show that capping awards can reduce the overall cost of “defensive medicine”, that is, what I referred to above as “cover my ass unnecessary lab testing”:

http://www.factcheck.org/article133.html

But notice that the savings shown in the studies were very limited in scope, being only in the context of heart conditions in a hospital setting.

What I want is a more fundamental paradigm shift in the way we evaluate liability. I’m not talking about just capping awards… it is still too early to tell if that will help overall… I mean to find some way to stop the flood of frivolous and wasteful lawsuits from even starting.

As personally gratifying it would be for me to see all the malpractice lawyers strangled, this is not very realistic. You see, more of them will just pop up. No, we need to cut this out at the root. How is it that they can even have the power to file this crap in the first place?

Let me ask y’all something: if you took your car into the shop, and it was making some knocking noise, the mechanics fixed it, and you noticed that you also needed an oil change after you got your car back, would you sue the mechanic? What if the mechanic said that he couldn’t fix the knocking noise, and you took it down to another mechanic who said that he could… would you sue the first mechanic? What if you felt like the mechanic was mean to you while he was fixing your car, or “talked down” to you? Would you have a basis to sue him then?

Just substitute yourself as an ailing person above instead of an ailing car. In the world of medical malpractice, the above cases are all valid reasons for a lawyer to try to recruit you as a client so that he can file paper after paper, harrassing the doctor, and chewing up resources and time for no good reason.

There’s got to be a way to stop the insanity.

[En_Sabah_Nur]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
hspder wrote:
Basically, my point is that there was a strong investment in this – by providing subsidies to colleges to teach more nurses, and cheaper and easier loans/scholarships to people who wanted to go into Med School, to sustain them for the long period of time – we would have many more nurses and doctors.

Would that, in your opinion, help? How? If not, why?

I truly don’t think there is much of a problem with the numbers of health care professionals being produced now. The ONLY number I am concerned about at all is the number of minorities who have that as an option or who make it passed college level to even make that choice in the first place. If there is a “shortage”, that would be where it is. Again, I see three major problems. One of those is the sue happy society we all have created. The second is the effect that insurance companies truly have on health care and the advancement of medicine. The last is the effect that pharmaceutical companies have over the entire medical field as far as actually holding BACK progress.
[/quote]

I thought the number of minority physicians was on the rise in the U.S.? I thought about doing something medical related but Biology is tearing me all kinds of new assholes…

[hedo]

[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
lothario1132 wrote:
But as with any kind of risk and liability issue, we create a vulnerability to massive litigation (we’re talking life and death in some cases here, there’s a lot at stake), and thus the “malpractice insurance” was born.

Dammit if this whole thing just hasn’t fucked us all over, though. This is what I said in my first post here. The root of the problem lies in making someone else, no matter how smart or well-trained, responsible for your personal wellbeing. I’m not saying get rid of liabilty in gross incompetence, e.g., oops I left a scalpel inside of my patient during surgery, and now they’re all messed up… I’m just saying that this idea of liability has grown into some kind of crazy beast that doesn’t make sense anymore.

I was re-reading my earlier post and realized that I should probably clarify what I’m trying to say here.

Please understand that most (around 70%) of medical malpractice lawsuits are considered frivolous. If a physician is dragged to court, he wins 80% of the time.

Some studies show that capping awards can reduce the overall cost of “defensive medicine”, that is, what I referred to above as “cover my ass unnecessary lab testing”:

http://www.factcheck.org/article133.html

But notice that the savings shown in the studies were very limited in scope, being only in the context of heart conditions in a hospital setting.

What I want is a more fundamental paradigm shift in the way we evaluate liability. I’m not talking about just capping awards… it is still too early to tell if that will help overall… I mean to find some way to stop the flood of frivolous and wasteful lawsuits from even starting.

As personally gratifying it would be for me to see all the malpractice lawyers strangled, this is not very realistic. You see, more of them will just pop up. No, we need to cut this out at the root. How is it that they can even have the power to file this crap in the first place?

Let me ask y’all something: if you took your car into the shop, and it was making some knocking noise, the mechanics fixed it, and you noticed that you also needed an oil change after you got your car back, would you sue the mechanic? What if the mechanic said that he couldn’t fix the knocking noise, and you took it down to another mechanic who said that he could… would you sue the first mechanic? What if you felt like the mechanic was mean to you while he was fixing your car, or “talked down” to you? Would you have a basis to sue him then?

Just substitute yourself as an ailing person above instead of an ailing car. In the world of medical malpractice, the above cases are all valid reasons for a lawyer to try to recruit you as a client so that he can file paper after paper, harrassing the doctor, and chewing up resources and time for no good reason.

There’s got to be a way to stop the insanity.[/quote]

How about if the lawsuit is found frivolous the person who filed it pays legal costs for both sides.

That way only the legitimate cases would get filed in theory since the lawyer is on contingency and will not put up his money on a whim

[Professor_X]

[quote]En Sabah Nur wrote:

I thought the number of minority physicians was on the rise in the U.S.? I thought about doing something medical related but Biology is tearing me all kinds of new assholes…[/quote]

I would guess that depends on what you mean by “rise”. I was the only black guy in my class. There was one black girl, two latino girls, 5 native Indian girls (as in from India…one who was simply beautiful inside and out but that’s another story), about 10 asian girls (if you include the twins who were from Persia), and about 20 white girls. There were more women than men and the rest were white guys aside from 4 native Indian guys (which is who I generally hung out with simply because our cultures were pretty similar…ie, same music, basketball, weightlifting and other shit we just clicked on).

Yes, I suppose that is a rise from ZERO black and latino people in the classes previous.