Disapearing doctors debate

Intersting post over at Tort Deform today by UT law prof Charles Silver on the continuing debate over the number of physicians in Texas after its major 2003 med mal lawsuit restrictions. Silver argues that the state would have gained physicians with or without tort reform, but notes that the growth in the number of practicing docs in Texas is slower now than it was before the law passed.

Here's a question, though: Even if tort reform really did encourage some doctors to move to Texas, would you really want to be their patients? My guess is that any doctor whose sole reason for moving to Texas is that he could escape getting sued is not likely to be the creme of the crop.

Comments

[Anirban]

"My guess is that any doctor whose sole reason for moving to Texas is that he could escape getting sued is not likely to be the creme of the crop"

Who are you kidding? Don’t want to sound pompous, but Doctors ARE the creme of the crop of all professions . In no other profession are people expected to be perfect all the time, provide services for free after years of long ,expensive education, accept annual reductions in compensation,pay a huge portion of their income for liability insurance, and take timeaway from their profession to sit in court to defend their actions, when they're found to have done nothing wrong 81% of the time. The problem with you is that being a megaphone for a trial lawyer lobby ,reproducing their cliché from their yearbook. Your logic is based on the assumption that if you threaten someone, they will improve their behavior. That might be true if someone is deliberately acting badly (we already know it doesn’t work in criminal cases) ,but there are already enough professional and personal reasons for trying the best to help someone, no threat like that can improve anyone’s behavior. People who are trying their best are not made better by holding the “ Sword of Damocleis” of a lawsuit over them , What you do is you reduce their ability to concentrate at the task at hand and they actually perform worse .

The dirty little secrets of an American legal system , is that anyone who feels wronged, or wants to feel wronged, for any reason, is protected from any risks you might think exist in bringing a lawsuit against another individual , that everyone is a victim at some point in time, and every circumstance has a victor and victim. Sure, frivolous cases may be thrown out fairly quickly- but that's not the point. The point is you vindicated yourself by forcing your enemy to part with quite a bit of money. It's a frightening amount of completely unchecked power the average citizen can have.
If we think the legal industry is just that- an industry- with just standard marketing practice- like your everyday "no risk, money back guarantee." (no collection, no fees) The only differentiator here is who sues who- you only get the no risk guarantee if you decide to sue first You'd almost think we're inspiring people to be victims! Even unintentional, this sort of imbalance of risk can do nothing but make bringing a lawsuit more likely .This notion that a losing plaintiff never has to pay flies in the face of the entire concept of a justice procedure which supposedly can assess a monetary loss caused by any action, and if necessary, require an offending party to compensate the "victimized" party for that loss. If someone cannot possibly be a victim of a wrongful lawsuit- which is essentially the people like you , is saying- then can we consider people who suffer property damage, damage to a reputation, or other such things ,victims who deserve retribution?

With all these when the legislations are paying dividends at least somewhat,you bring on the same violin and expect creme of the crop to take care of you ,when you your self have done everything to bite the hand that cares for everyone of us.

[Jack]

When there are doctors out there that are injuring their patients then they should be held accountable. Bringing a medical malpractice case to trial is an expensive proposition for the plaintiff lawyer doing so. An attorney can expect $50,000 in expenses to bring the malpractice case to trial. If that is not a deterrent from the filing of frivolous malpractice lawsuits I don't know what would be.

Medical errors are real and often fatal. Whether litigation is the best method for dealing with this problem is open to debate but for now there is little alternative for the injured party to seek a remedy. I encourage you to look at the article published in the Birmingham News this past weekend about one doctor who had received over one hundred malpractice suits in one year. http://www.al.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/1165072016248530.xml?birminghamnews?nstate&coll=2This is most definitely an unusual case but shows that there are serious problems in how doctors are allowed to operate. An attorney facing anything comparable would have long since disbarred and no longer practicing law. The fact that he is was allowed to practice for this long is disturbing.