{"id":413372,"date":"2010-03-10T18:18:53","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T23:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/breaking-latest-worthless-medical-malpractice-reforms-40657\/"},"modified":"2010-03-10T18:18:53","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T23:18:53","slug":"breaking-the-latest-worthless-medical-malpractice-reforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/413372","title":{"rendered":"Breaking: The Latest Worthless Medical Malpractice ?Reforms?"},"content":{"rendered":"
On 03.10.10 11:30 AM posted by Hans Von Spakovsky<\/p>\n

\n<ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/doctor_bill0906235.gif">\"\"<\/p>When President Obama held his health care summit at the White House, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) pointed out that a key part of containing medical costs was completely missing from the debate: medical malpractice legal reform. The cost of defensive medicine alone (without taking into account the direct costs of such claims) \u0093could be as high as $239 billion\u0094 according to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers cited by Camp.<\/p>\n

So what was President Obama\u0092s response? He basically interrupted Camp and told him to \u0093finish up.\u0094 On March 3, when Obama gave his speech in the East Room on health care reform, his only mention of this issue was about \u0093funding state grants on medical malpractice reform.\u0094 Of course, he has said that before \u0096 in his address to Congress on health care last fall. Then he offered to fund \u0093pilot\u0094 projects even though states like Texas and Mississippi have instituted such reform and we already know what works.<spanid="more-28479"><\/span><\/p>\n

The House bill actually tries to kill effective malpractice remedies such as caps on noneconomic damages. It provides incentive payments to states that provide \u0093an alternative medical liability law\u0094 that prompts the \u0093fair resolution\u0094 of disputes \u0096 but no such incentive will be paid to any state that limits \u0093attorneys\u0092 fees or imposes caps on damages.\u0094<\/p>\n

Now according to a source, Rep. Cuellar (D-TX) is trying to convince his fellow legislators that this problem can be solved through an amendment to H.R. 3590. His proposed amendment states that \u0093[t]he development, recognition, or implementation of any guideline or other standard under any provision of this Act shall not be construed to establish the standard of care or duty of care owed by health care providers to their patients in any medical malpractice action or claim.\u0094 The amendment also says that nothing in the federal law will \u0093modify or impair State law governing legal standards or procedures used in medical malpractice cases.\u0094<\/p>\n

However, arguably this provision may be worse than useless from the standpoint of protecting medical providers from medical malpractice claims because it may give medical providers a false sense of security. Even if defendants will be able to argue that federal guidelines do not automatically establish a standard of care, plaintiffs\u0092 lawyers will compare the doctor\u0092s conduct to that federal guideline whenever the doctor\u0092s actions deviate from it. So, the doctor will still be at risk. Second, this amendment will not preclude a plaintiff\u0092s lawyer from arguing that a doctor should have done more than the minimum federal guideline, turning it into the equivalent of a standard. Third, only a state legislature can stop state courts from adopting the federal guideline as the state\u0092s standard of care for medical treatment. Finally, this provision gives the states no reason or incentive to implement specific reforms that are known to work like capping damages for noneconomic damages (like \u0093pain and suffering\u0094).<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that so far in this extended debate over healthcare, there is absolutely nothing substantive in the president\u0092s proposals or the House or Senate bills that would implement any real medical malpractice reforms.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/10\/…actice-reform\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 03.10.10 11:30 AM posted by Hans Von Spakovsky <ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/doctor_bill0906235.gif"><\/p>When President Obama held his health care summit at the White House, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) pointed out that a key part of containing medical costs was completely missing from the debate: medical malpractice legal reform. The cost of defensive medicine alone (without taking into account […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-413372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}