Health care without lawsuits: a scary proposition

Every time I hear a group like Common Good argue that medicine would get safer if there were fewer lawsuits, I really want to cringe, because it's long been true that some of the most protected health care institutions are often some of the worst in this country. The classic example has always been the military health care system, where injured military people don't have the right to sue the same way civilians do. Law prof Jonathan Turley today highlights some of the gory casualties of that lawsuit-free environment in a USA Today column. A sampling of the cases of military malpractice that won't see the inside of a courtroom:

*Lt. Cmdr. Walter Hardin spent 11 months with red lesions from his legs to his torso that a doctor classified as eczema. It was correctly diagnosed as cancer shortly before he died.

*Sailor Dawn Lambert had to have a fallopian tube removed, but military surgeons left five sponges and a plastic marking device in her abdomen. They remained there for months until resulting complications forced a second surgery to remove her other fallopian tube, leaving her infertile. She was given $66 monthly in disability pay.

*Linda Branch lost her husband while he was serving in the Air Force after he was turned away twice by a military hospital that told him his intense stomach pains was nothing more than stomach flu. He died of a bowel obstruction.

Grim stuff indeed...