- Hit by stray bullet, wakes from anesthesia fighting, hospital told to pay $17 million [Georgia; Insurance Journal]
- Study: physician’s previous paid claims history has no impact on odds of catastrophic med-mal payout [Bixenstine et al, JHQ via PoL] Overall, med-mal payouts have fallen steadily in past decade; $3.6 billion figure last year follows strongly regionalized pattern with top per capita figures all in Northeast [Diederich analysis of annual payouts via TortsProf] Florida law now requires that testifying medical witness be in same specialty as defendant [Business Week]
- In lawsuits alleging “wrongful birth,” what’s the measure of damages? [Gerard Magliocca, Concurring Opinions]
- ObamaCare exchanges in D.C., California and Connecticut declare smoking “pre-existing condition,” say insurers can’t base higher rates on it [Kevin Williamson, NR]
- “The Crime of Whitening Teeth with Over-the-Counter Products” [Caleb Brown, Bluegrass Institute]
- How not to die: Jonathan Rauch on end-of-life overtreatment [The Atlantic]
- “I’m going to start a rumor that Sudafed is an abortifacient. Then the feds will finally have to allow reasonable access to it.” [me on Twitter]
Tagged as:
Florida,
Georgia,
hospitals,
medical malpractice,
medical malpractice insurance,
ObamaCare,
wrongful birth and wrongful life
We refer of course to the practice of dispensing with liability insurance [Sheila Weller, Vanity Fair]:
The Diggers broached the idea of a free clinic to two doctors, and Dr. David E. Smith, who had lived in the Haight for years, volunteered. He signed a $300-a-month lease for a suite at Haight and Ashbury, rounded up volunteers who utilized all the samples of penicillin, tranquilizers, and other supplies from the hospitals at which they interned, and started a clinic to treat patients suffering from bad acid trips or venereal disease —- all with no malpractice insurance, “which was totally insane,” says Smith today. On June 7, 1967, the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic opened for business with “a line around the block,” according to Smith.
More on the free clinic, one of the counterculture’s more celebrated innovations at the time, here and here; more on the practice of dispensing with liability coverage here, here, here, and here.
Tagged as:
medical malpractice insurance,
San Francisco
“Several hospitals in New York City are eliminating or trimming malpractice insurance, and at least two of them have no further reserves to pay claims. Some hospitals in other cities, particularly jurisdictions known for large malpractice awards, are also going uninsured, the New York Times reports.” [ABA Journal]
Tagged as:
hospitals,
medical malpractice insurance,
NYC
- Government’s hospital care guidelines may be fueling dangerous overuse of antibiotics [White Coat] FDA says fewer drugs are in shortage [Reuters, earlier here, etc.]
- “Post-tort-reform Texas doctor supply” [Ted Frank/PoL and commenters] “Change in Procedures Lets Medical Malpractice [Insurance] Industry Thrive” [PC 360]
- Forcing companies to make politicized disclosures to customers implicates First Amendment [Hans Bader on HHS "must credit ObamaCare" reg]
- Iqbal and Twombly SCOTUS decisions on pleading have helped protect pharmaceutical defendants from flimsily based suits [James Beck, who has changed law firms to Reed Smith]
- How accurate is hospital data coding? Ask thousands of pregnant British men [Nigel Hawkes via Flowing Data]
- Class-action-fed boom in Medicaid dentistry + “let’s put docs in schools” idea = scope for horrific abuse, no matter how it’s financed [Bloomberg via Jesse Walker]
- Suits blaming obstetricians for cerebral palsy rack up $78 million win in Philadelphia, $74 million in California [Legal Intelligencer, Cal Coast News]
- Ninth Circuit: on reflection, let’s not seize control of VA mental health programs [AP, earlier here, etc.]
Tagged as:
hospitals,
medical malpractice,
medical malpractice insurance,
Ninth Circuit,
ObamaCare,
pharmaceuticals,
pleading,
psychiatry,
Texas
- Primer on “severability”: would ObamaCare fall if individual mandate struck down? [Loyola, Epstein, Shapiro, American Interest] Maybe the President picked the wrong fight: “Supreme Court’s Ratings Jump Following Health Care Hearings” [Randy Barnett]
- Heritage on med-mal reform and federalism [Hans von Spakovsky; my take] A case for New Hampshire’s “early offer” med-mal proposal [Robinette, TortsProf] “Ohio’s tort reform has curbed soaring malpractice costs” [Columbus Dispatch editorial]
- Madison County: plaintiff’s lawyer seeks gag order in med-mal case [MC Record]
- Academics debate whether authorities should crack down on medical tourism [Cohen et al, Opinio Juris]
- Shortage of physician volunteers at marathon sports events, readers of this site can guess the reason [Outside mag via White Coat]
- Connecticut Gov. Malloy proposes letting home health workers rather than nurses administer pills to homebound patients, major savings foreseen [Connecticut Mirror] Related, David Henderson;
- Governments now often cite HIPAA as reason not to release information regarding accidents, crimes and disasters [Glenn Cook, Las Vegas Review-Journal] How HIPAA implementation can keep patient history out of emergency medical responders’ hands [EP Monthly]
- London: Red Ken has pay doc, NHS being Not His Style [Marian Tupy, Cato at Liberty]
Tagged as:
Connecticut,
emergency medicine,
HIPAA,
medical malpractice insurance,
New Hampshire,
ObamaCare,
Ohio
Neurosurgeons in Cook and four other counties pay nearly $230,000 a year, obstetricians nearly $140,000, and general surgeons nearly $100,000. The legislature in Springfield had voted liability limits, but last year the Illinois Supreme Court, in a decision hailed by organized plaintiff’s lawyers but condemned as lawless by many others, struck down those limits. [Heather Perlberg, Medill]
Tagged as:
Chicago,
Illinois,
Madison County,
medical malpractice insurance
You may remember Professor Rodwin and I debating his paper on Point of Law; that debate has spilled over onto the pages of the November/December issue of Health Affairs, which published a short letter from me criticizing the Rodwin study and a muddying response from the authors:
Marc Rodwin and colleagues’ highly publicized conclusion that Massachusetts does not have a malpractice insurance crisis (May/Jun 08) is not supported by the data in their paper.
First, the sole finding supporting the conclusion, that malpractice insurance rates declined 1 percent from 1990 to 2005, is an artifact of the Simpson Paradox. Rates for low-risk doctors increased 14 percent; rates for high-risk doctors increased 45 percent. The mean decreased entirely because the mix of doctors changed, and the percentage of insured doctors with expensive high-risk policies declined substantially…
Tagged as:
Marc Rodwin,
Massachusetts,
medical malpractice insurance
How many elective inguinal hernia repairs do you think a surgeon might have to perform to raise the money to pay his annual malpractice insurance bill? We’re not told which state he practices in or what kind of practice or community, only that he’s getting a relatively good deal on insurance because he has no outstanding suits.
Guess for yourself, and then go see whether ER Stories’ answer is higher or lower than you guessed (Dec. 7).
Tagged as:
medical malpractice insurance
Coyote also points to this page, which magically promises simultaneously to reduce health premiums while requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions and doing lots of other generous stuff. Total discussion of medical liability issues consists of the following bullet point:
Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.
Yes, because suppressing current malpractice insurance rates by adopting artificially rosy premises as to future payouts worked out so well when tried in New York. Update Monday: transition yanks entire “Agenda”, this section and others.
Tagged as:
Barack Obama,
insurers,
medical malpractice insurance,
New York
Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, treated 58,000 American patients in 2005, and looks to treat 20 percent more this year. Why?
At Bumrungrad Hospital, [spokesman Ruben] Toral said, the lower cost of living is a major factor in the savings, but so are differences in how the medical system operates.
Doctors in Thailand pay about $5,000 a year for malpractice insurance, compared with more than $100,000 for some specialties in the United States.
Thai courts will adjudicate malpractice claims, but the largest award ever issued was about $100,000 and the law there doesn’t permit damages for pain and suffering.
(Mark Roth, “Surgery abroad an option for those with minimal health coverage,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sep. 10). Apparently the Thais haven’t heard the propaganda from the American trial bar that caps on non-economic damages don’t lower malpractice insurance premiums or medical expenses. And apparently, thousands of Americans prefer cheaper healthcare to the opportunity to recover pain-and-suffering damages: unfortunately, plaintiffs’ organizations fight very hard to ensure that American consumers don’t actually get that choice. (Via, of all places, Bizarro-Overlawyered, where one can almost see the smoke coming out of the ears of the posting blogger because of the “Does-Not-Compute” cognitive dissonance.)
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
hospitals,
Justinian Lane,
medical,
medical malpractice,
medical malpractice insurance,
noneconomic damages
Martin Grace and I have written a Liability Outlook for AEI looking at the last several years of CJD/AIR studies on medical malpractice. The conclusion? “In many ways, the problem with AIR’s reports is a perfect microcosm of what doctors find most distasteful about the liability system: a trial-lawyer mentality that cherry-picks facts and twists data to reach knee-jerk conclusions under the guise of a false science.” See also Jim Copland’s dissection of one such study at Point of Law on Jul. 8.
We look forward to Kevin Drum giving this paper the same deference he credulously gave AIR’s last bogus report.
One flaw of the paper is that we didn’t include the story of “Bob,” the dummy literally used to scapegoat insurance-company executives by CJD at an ATLA conference. For other CJD shenanigans, see Dec. 23, 2004 and Mar. 19, 2004. (Cross-posted at Point of Law.)
Tagged as:
Center for Justice & Democracy,
insurance,
Liability Outlook,
medical malpractice insurance,
Ted Frank
