I always like to read what medical malpractice defense lawyers are telling each other about how to defend a medical malpractice case. I found this paragraph today in an article discussing defending medical doctors: This changed image probably explains why defendant physician usually views the prospect of a jury trial…
Honestly, I have always figured they did. My thinking was that it is basic economics. Decrease the upside risk and premiums will come down. Now, I’m not so sure. Certainly, at a glance, a cap on noneconomic damages appears to be correlated with keeping health care malpractice premiums down. But…
A few facts from Ezra Klein’s Washington Post article today: Congressional Budget Office (CBO) took a careful look at the evidence on defensive medicine and concluded that aggressive reforms to the medical malpractice system “would reduce total national health care spending by about 0.5 percent.” (No one argues – at…
A large group of Warren (Ohio) area physicians donned their white lab coats Wednesday while lashing out at excessive malpractice insurance premiums that they say are caused by a larger-than-normal number of malpractice claims. Without being specific in terms [naturally] of the actual number of malpractice suits in court, Dr.…
…Because even Texas Governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry thinks so. In his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination, Perry giddily brags about the putative benefits of malpractice and other tort reforms that have effectively choked serious malpractice victims in Texas. But even Governor Perry agrees that tort reform…
Explore Baltimore County writes about a bill introduced by a doctor who is in the Maryland House of Delegates that says, in effect, that if a doctor says he or she is ‘sorry’ for a medical outcome, that apology would be inadmissible in a Maryland courtroom. I just looked for…
Issue #1 for the House Judiciary Committee: medical malpractice reform. The title of the hearing gives you some idea of the objectivity: “Medical Liability Reform — Cutting Costs, Spurring Investment, Creating Jobs.” The hearing came a day after the House of Representatives voted 245-189 to repeal the Affordable Care Act…
The Maryland General Assembly is open for business, which means a lot of lobbying on both sides of the aisle on medical malpractice related issues. Lobbyists for doctors and hospitals have been forever sounding the alarm of doctor shortages, relying primarily on their own studies to support this premise. Maybe…
The Baltimore Sun wrote an article a few months back on hospital executive compensation that I did not see until today. No breaking news there: these guys make a ton of money. But it is interesting snooping around looking at non-profit health care providers’ salaries. Sometimes, hospitals will create a…
The widely read blog KevinMD, written by Dr. Kevin Pho who is an opinion leader on issues related to the medical point-of-view on medical malpractice issues, makes what I think is a startling admission: Politically, malpractice caps are dead — tort reformers should abandon that option. Furthermore, arguing that tort…