- New ACA regulations from the feds restrict employer wellness programs [Jon Hyman; Leslie Francis, Bill of Health]
- Frequent-flyer defense medical examiner comes to grief in New York [Eric Turkewitz]
- Fecal transplants (that’s not a misprint) appear to hold out hope of saving a lot of lives, except for the mountain of FDA paperwork blocking them [Amar Toor/The Verge, Maggie Koerth-Baker] Enter the grey market [Beth Skwarecki]
- Why can’t the FDA catch up with Europe on sunscreens? [Alex Tabarrok]
- “The banning of catastrophic-only plans infuriates me the most…. the only plans that are actually financially sensible for a healthy individual to purchase.” [MargRev comments section]
- More on the recent study of malpractice suits by a group of Johns Hopkins researchers [Christopher Robinette]
- For all his public health pretensions, Michael Bloomberg “has no idea what he’s talking about” on medical marijuana [Jacob Sullum]
- Another look at asylums? [James Panero, City Journal]
- Feds’ war on Google pharma ads reflects no credit on D.C. [Brian Doherty]
Posts Tagged ‘medical malpractice’
Medical roundup
- 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]
Medical roundup
- “It Didn’t Feel Like a ‘Win'” [“Birdstrike, M.D.”/White Coat]
- Federal ban on long shifts by hospital residents may have harmed safety, in part because it drove up number of patient handoffs [USA Today]
- N.J. bill would narrow chance for suits against first aid, ambulance and rescue squads [NJLRA]
- Bill in Georgia legislature aims to apply workers’-comp-like principles to med-mal [Florida Times-Union]
- I mostly agree that med-mal reform is for states to decide, but Ramesh Ponnuru may underrate Washington’s legitimate role in prescribing legal consequences when it pays for care [Bloomberg/syndicated]
- Shift burdens through price control: NJ assemblyman’s bill would prohibit insurers from considering docs’ claims experience except for cases that result in actual court findings [NJLRA]
- Someone’s hand stuck in the sharps box again? Sixth time this month [Throckmorton]
To corral health care costs, look at medical liability
That’s former Obama Administration budget director Peter Orszag’s view [Bloomberg]:
Most of the costs in the U.S. health-care system are incurred in a small number of expensive cases. The top 25 percent of Medicare beneficiaries ranked by cost, for example, account for 85 percent of total spending. And the expenses in those cases are driven significantly by the recommendations that doctors make to pursue one treatment path and not another.
In making these choices, doctors are influenced by various things, including medical-school training, traditions among their peers, financial incentives (which are distorted by fee- for-service payments) and, yes, the medical-malpractice system. Improving the criteria for what constitutes appropriate care could significantly change doctors’ behavior and also save money, recent research by Michael Frakes of Cornell Law School suggests.
Torts roundup
- Officials: “36% of car-insure claims bogus” in NYC [NY Post]
- Unseen but looks promising: “Cultures of Tort Law in Europe” [Journal of European Tort Law via TortsProf]
- “The Limits of Texting Accident Lawsuits” [Ronald Miller]
- Lawmakers wonder whether there’s some way around Missouri Supreme Court’s “no med-mal reform on our watch” attitude [Kansas City Star]
- Trial lawyers unhappy as Michigan high court toughens standards on slip-fall suits [AP/Detroit News]
- Fast track: Illinois legislature moves to increase fees lawyers can recover in med-mal cases [Madison-St. Clair Record]
- New Jersey municipalities have stake in litigation reform [NJLRA]
Medical roundup
- “On Average, Physicians Spend Nearly 11 Percent Of Their 40-Year Careers With An Open, Unresolved Malpractice Claim” [Health Affairs via Pauline Chen, NY Times]
- SCOTUS lets stand Feds’ “accept Medicare or lose your Social Security” edict [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
- Robot surgery: from the Google ads, you might think lawyers are circling [Climateer via Tyler Cowen]
- New York mandates more aggressive anti-sepsis measures in hospitals, and White Coat thinks it won’t end well [EP Monthly]
- Shortages of generic FDA-regulated sterile injectables begin to take deadly toll [AP/Worcester Telegram, earlier]
- Continuing the discussion of electronic medical records from a few days back: as medico-legal documents, EMRs are under pressure to be something other than candid and spontaneous [Kaus] While other patients wait for critical care, ER docs and nurses enter mandatory data fields for whether the infant is a smoker or the flu victim is a fall risk [White Coat]
- Obamacare part-time-work fiasco “only starting to become news when it hits university professors” [Coyote, David Henderson, earlier]
Medical roundup
- “Blaming doctors for prescription drug abuse” [White Coat] Judge rules victim of pharmacy robbery can proceed with suit against doctor who prescribed painkillers [NYLJ]
- Louisiana Gov. Jindal’s proposal for letting contraceptives be sold over counter has good libertarian pedigree [David Henderson, Jonathan Adler] More: Ramesh Ponnuru.
- FDA vs. antiemetics: “How Long Before Zofran Gets Black Boxed?” [White Coat]
- ObamaCare vulnerable to an Origination Clause challenge? [Sandefur vs. Taranto, via Randy Barnett]
- “When a child drinks cologne, by all means, sue the doctor… ” [NJLRA]
- U.S. v. Caronia: does First Amendment protect promotion of off-label drug use? [Richard Epstein/Hoover, PoL, WSJ Law Blog, D&DL, Shackford]
- Ideas from John Goodman on med-mal reform [Psychology Today]
Medical and pharmaceutical roundup
- Community college restructures staff to avoid ObamaCare employee mandate [Daniel Luzer, Washington Monthly] New pressure toward part-time employment is a big story [Coyote] But do regulations allow shift to part-time workers as a way of evading 50-employee rule, as seemingly contemplated in above post? [Gunn Chamberlain, P.A.] Why some workers might prefer being dropped from their employer’s health plan if higher pay results [Thom Lambert]
- Eleventh Circuit: hospital can be sued for not providing sign-language interpreter for emergency department visitors [Disabilities Law/Bagenstos]
- Proposition: “Off-label use can be, in many circumstances, the standard of care.” [Drug and Device Law] On Ben Goldacre’s new book “Bad Pharma” [Tyler Cowen]
- Overnight solution to med-mal crisis? Perhaps standard for lawyers’ malpractice should automatically fluctuate to reflect that for doctors [Ted Frank, Point of Law]
- Criminalizing the professions [White Coat]
- Drug shortages persist [ACSH, earlier here, here, etc.] What the FDA could do to speed antibiotic approval [Yevgeniy Feyman, Medical Progress Today, earlier]
- Clearer line-drawing between pharmacy and mass drug-compounding needed after tainted-steroid debacle [Scott Gottlieb/Sheldon Bradshaw, WSJ, earlier] With compounding pharmacy doubtfully able to pay claims, “You’re going to get people suing everyone.” [Boston Globe, David Oliver]
How they got that photo
The Jacksonville, Fla. paper runs a dramatic photo from a lawyer’s office arising from a medical malpractice lawsuit. White Coat finds evidence that the circumstances of the photo-taking were less than ideally spontaneous [EP Monthly]
Medical roundup
- Submit to individual mandate, or pay a tax to get out: hey, there’s a precedent for that [Akhil Amar via Magliocca]
- Stare decisis be damned? Missouri high court overturns own precedent to strike down damage caps [Post-Dispatch, PoL, MissouriNet, American Medical News (AMA)]
- Authorities say Florida hospital employee may have wrongfully accessed more than 700,000 patient records; crash victims got lawyer-chiropractor solicitations from someone familiar with nonpublic details of their cases [Jeff Weiner, Orlando Sentinel]
- Time to rethink Certificate of Need supply restrictions [Barton Hinkle, Richmond Times-Dispatch]
- By its legislative author: “What New Hampshire’s ‘early offer’ law really does” [J. Brandon Giuda, Union Leader, earlier]
- Dueling studies on impact of Texas medical liability reform [David Hyman, Charles Silver et al, “Does Tort Reform Affect Physician Supply?“, Stephen Magee, “Contrary Evidence” (PDF) and “Rapid Physician Supply Response“; ACEP; Austin American-Statesman on Hyman/Silver, D Magazine and Longview News-Journal on Magee, Gov. Rick Perry] “Liability insurers are noticing an uptick in large verdicts” [Alicia Gallegos, American Medical News (AMA)]
- “Medicare Costs Too Much, So Let’s Make Private Payers Make Up the Difference” [Peter Suderman, Reason; John Walters, Maryland Public Policy Institute]