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MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CLAIMS
There is an economic reality to medical malpractice claims that make the prosecution of these claims unlike any other case.?? While a potential client may have a legally and factually compelling medical malpractice claim, the potential client may find themselves bringing their medical records to one plaintiff's medical malpractice attorney after another, only to have their case rejected, because the attorney tells the potential client that they are "too busy".?? The reason behind the rejection maybe what I call the economic reality behind the case.
In Arizona, many physicians carry medical malpractice insurance with $1,000,000.00 insurance limits.?? Their contract of insurance allows them to give, or withhold, consent to settle the claim.?? This is unlike most other insurance contracts.?? If you've been in a motor vehicle collision, even if you think you weren't at fault, your auto insurer will settle, or not settle, the claim regardless of your wishes.?? Additionally, when payments are made for??a physician's act of medical malpractice, the physician must notify the Arizona Medical Board, and the payment stays on their permanent record with the Board.?? What this means is that if someone is harmed as a result of an act of medical malpractice, but the damage to the patient has a potential jury verdict less than the physician's insurance coverage limits, the physician has little financial incentive to give consent to settle the claim.?? Their personal assets aren't at risk, their insurance company will pay the damages and pay for their lawyer, so they have no personal financial risk.?? Further, they give consent to settle, the Arizona Medical Board will have to be notified, so they might as well take the chance of having a jury decide the case, and then, and only then, if they lose the case, will the Medical Board have to be notified.??
Therefore, the plaintiff's medical malpractice attorney will have to prepare and spend the same amount of money on experts on the more modest damage case, than they would??on the larger case.?? Typical costs for a medical malpractice case can be $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 or more, most of which go to the typically out of state experts necessary to give opinion testimony on standard of care, causation and damages.?? While these large expenditures make economic sense on?? large damage cases, which involve catastrophic, permanent damages, it doesn't make economic sense on lesser damage cases, which don't involve permanent, life affecting damages.?? I know this seems unfair, and not always about justice, but this is the system we are currently operating under.
I welcome your call to consult with me on any potential medical malpractice claim, and I will be honest and candid with you regarding whether I can help you.
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Health Care Reform and Medical Malpractice
Posted by: euser
September 09, 2009
While the nation debates how health care reform will be accomplished, the issue of medical malpractice claims continues to be brought up by those hoping to deny the rights of victims of malpractice.
- Medical malpractice has no place in the healthcare debate. Healthcare reform is about making sure that every American has access to quality, low-cost healthcare, not about limiting the legal rights of innocent patients harmed by medical negligence.
- Tort reform does not improve the quality of our healthcare system or produce cost savings. Forty-eight states have already enacted at least one medical malpractice tort reform measure. Yet, these legal restrictions have done nothing to improve our health care system-forty seven million Americans still have no health care, costs are still escalating and 98,000 Americans still die each year from preventable medical errors. Limiting the legal rights of injured patients will do nothing to fix these problems.
- Medical malpractice is about real people, with real injuries. The Institute of Medicine estimates that 98,000 people die each year in the US from preventable medical errors. And, this number does not even include the countless other people who are injured by medical errors. Rather than reforming the legal system that provides protections to these injured patients, we must focus on reforming the medical system in this country to prevent these errors from ever happening in the first place.
- There is no medical malpractice crisis. In 2008, medical malpractice payments accounted to 0.2 percent of all health costs - the lowest level on record. Furthermore, researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health have found that nearly all medical negligence claims are meritorious, with 97 percent of claims involving medical injury and 80 percent involving physical injuries resulting in major disability or death.
- Americans should not have to give up rights, in order to gain the right to healthcare. President Obama has repeatedly stated that in America, healthcare is a right. Likewise, Americans should not have to relinquish their constitutionally protected 7th Amendment rights in order to gain access to quality healthcare.
- Lawmakers should focus on the key issues. Achieving consensus on the health reform is an extremely delicate balance. Lawmakers must not unnecessarily insert extraneous, controversial issues such as tort reform into an already complicated issue.
- Health courts would be an expensive, bureaucratic nightmare. They would exchange a patient's constitutional right to a jury trial for a schedule of pre-determined outcomes that would be handed out by judges more interested in appeasing special interests than rendering justice to the injured patients standing before them. And health courts would not protect patients from wrongdoers, but instead, would shield doctors and hospitals from accountability for their careless, harmful acts. Health courts truly are an unfair proposition for patients.
