I provided my thoughts on Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on Friday on Public Citizen’s recent report on medical malpractice and its impact on health care costs. The short answer: not much. But Public Citizen provided one more malpractice statistic that is worth mentioning. In an hour, chances are that five to 11 Americans will die from preventable medical errors by the time you finish. Statistically, it is more likely than not that not a single malpractice payment will be made because any of these deaths that would not have occurred absent medical malpractice.
The notion that most malpractice lawsuits in Maryland are trumped up by medical malpractice lawyers is just plain false. The reality is that, relatively speaking, few meritorious malpractice cases ever see the light of day.