Much of this alleged negligence eg babies born with cerebral
palsy is just natural illness and not the fault of the doctors.
Recently the Canadian govt gave over millions to a man who had been
handed to the Syrians and 'tortured' for a year. The politicans love
handing over the taxpayers money to militants.
excerpt
http://online.wsj.com
That confrontation fizzled, however, and before long Texas
succeeded at enacting two simple but effective reforms. One capped
medical malpractice awards for noneconomic damages at $250,000,
changed the burden of proof for claiming injury for emergency room
care from simple negligence to "willful and wanton neglect," and
required that an independent medical expert file a re****t in sup****t
of the claimant.
This has allowed doctors and hospitals to cut costs and even increase
the resources devoted to charity care. Take Christus Health, a
nonprofit Catholic health system across the state. Thanks to tort
reform, over the past four years Christus saved $100 million that it
otherwise would have spent fending off bogus lawsuits or paying higher
insurance premiums. Every dollar saved was reinvested in helping poor
patients.
One judge now makes all pretrial discovery and evidence rulings,
including the validity of expert doctor re****ts, for all cases. This
creates legal consistency and virtually eliminates "venue shopping" –
a process by which trial lawyers file briefs in districts that they
know will be friendly to frivolous suits. Trials still occur in
plaintiffs' home counties.
More change sailed through the legislature in 2005; tort reform had
become popular with voters and lobbying against it was ineffectual.
The 2005 reform created minimum medical standards to prove an injury
in asbestos and silica cases. Now plaintiffs must show diminished lung
capacity in addition to an X-ray indicating disease.
In sum, these reforms have worked wonders. There are about 85,000
asbestos plaintiffs in Texas. Under the old system, each would be
advancing in the courts. But in the four years since the creation of
MDLs, only 300 plaintiffs' cases have been certified ready for trial.
And in each case the plaintiff is almost certainly sick with
mesothelioma or cancer.
No one else claiming "asbestosis" has yet filed a pulmonology re****t
showing diminished lung capacity. This means that only one-third of 1%
of all those people who have filed suit claiming they were sick with
asbestosis have actually had a qualified and impartial doctor agree
that they have an asbestos-caused illness.
Before the asbestos and silica MDLs were created, nonmalignancy
plaintiffs settled with defendants for anywhere between $30,000 to
$150,000 per case. No one knows how many bogus cases were settled in
the state with large cash payments. Lawyers who specialized in
defending those cases say there were tens of thousands.
The full costs of large settlements and runaway malpractice suits may
never be known. But it is clear that the costs were paid for by
consumers through the increased price of goods, by pensioners through
diminished stock prices, and by workers through lost jobs. Another
group often overlooked is those who are priced out of health care, or
who didn't receive charity care because doctors were squeezed by tort
lawyers. Frivolous lawsuits hit the uninsured the hardest.
In 2003 and in 2005, Texas enacted a series of reforms to the state's
civil justice system. They are stunning in their success. Texas
Medical Liability Trust, one of the largest malpractice insurance
companies in the state, has slashed its premiums by 35%, saving
doctors some $217 million over four years. There is also a competitive
malpractice insurance industry in Texas, with over 30 companies
competing for business. This is driving rates down.
The result is an influx of doctors so great that recently the State
Board of Medical Examiners couldn't process all the new
medical-license applications quickly enough. The board faced a backlog
of 3,000 applications. To handle the extra workload, the legislature
rushed through an emergency appropriation last year.
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