As we reported a while back, a New Jersey rheumatologist has been required to pay $400,000 to a deaf patient for refusing to provide (at his expense) a sign language interpreter for her. (Instead, he exchanged written notes with help from her family members; there is no allegation that she suffered any physical harm.) Now Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics covers the case and notes that it could have an unintended and unpleasant consequence: doctors are now given a financial incentive to find excuses to turn away deaf patients from their practice.
6 Comments
I think it would be fair to assume that the term “crook” could be added as a predicate clause to the other term, “patient.” A crook-patient saw an opportunity to line her pocket and used the ADA to legally separate the doctor from his money. Surely this is an exception and somewhere among us is a hearing-impaired rat who needs a talkin’ to.
Perhaps the patient should have found a deaf doctor? Or one who already had a deaf or signing employee?
They shared a common mother-tongue, which happened to be written english. Why anyone would want to interpose the opportunities for mis-communication that occurs with a translator is beyond me; unless it is merely about the money.
This whole law requiring that the doctor pay for the translator is frustrating. Many times we do not get to pick the patients. We had this happen just this week. An illeagal from Belize ended up in the ER and was sent to us for follow up. The only language that he could speak was a Mayan dialect. We are required to have and pay for a translator. I was amazed that we found a service that would do it through the telephone and it only cost us$190 for the visit. We of course did not get an payment for the visit from the patient.
Just to clarify for Raymer- ASL and English are different languages. ASL has its own grammar and syntax. It is not an equivalent of English, and for a native ASL speaker, written English (or lip-reading) is a second language, not a “common mother tongue.”
Same applies for lawyers, too, by the way, including the financial incentives not to take cases. It is trickly, we want the law to help people with disadvantages to level the playing field. The problem is the reverse often happens – the law creates a new, unintended discrimination.