If a doctor's screw-up costs me my left leg, I should get only $250,000?

[BiggJawn]

Just heard Chimpy on NPR giving about his "Too many docs are leavin' th' business" speech...

It ain't the lawsuits, Shrubby, it's your insurance friends getting greedy. But then again, it ain't greedy when a Bush Pioneer tries to rip people off, it's just the "Murkan Way".

[yankeedem]

1. Has * presented ONE doctor yet who has left the business?

Or is he still too busy looking for the Iowa farmer that lost his farm to the inheritance tax?

[democracyindanger]

4. Actually, a friend's father

who was a longtime OB/GYN retired largely because of the increase in insurance premiums. So, it happens.

I agree with BiggJawn: It's about insurance companies' greed.

[yankeedem]

7. Maybe that pushed him to retire early

but the OB/GYN's where I am don't seem to be on food stamps. It's too bad he can't practice his love on women anymore, isn't it?

[democracyindanger]

10. So tell the doctors to suck it up

and let the insurance companies continue to make out like bandits, huh? :shrug:

[yankeedem]

11. Or better yet

Tell them to stop blaming their customer for their woes and put the blame on the insurance companies where it belongs.

[democracyindanger]

13. That I absolutely agree with

:)

[China_cat]

17. My youngest son's pediatrician

gave up his practice because of the insurance premiums and got board certified in allergies. He still practices. It was a crime to lose him. He was the BEST pediatrician in town and his record shows that he was never sued. Despite that, his premiums kept escalating and he refused to raise his prices to his patients to cover them.

[andino]

23. My wife is starting out as a pediatrician in July

Her insurance will cost between $35,000 and $55,000 a year. And that isn't even covering the tail coverage. The neat little thing about pediatricians is that they have to have a thing called tail coverage. It is meant to cover a kid up until they are 18. So if my wife is ONLY present at a birth she is liable for that kid up until he/she is 18. And she has to have coverage for that person for $3,000,000.

Gotta love insurance companies huh.

But you also have to love a government that allows it to go on. You know, people want doctors to never make mistakes. But guess what, they are people and people sometimes make mistakes. If there is a doc out there that is intentionally messing up peoples lives then by all means take him out of practice. But at the same time we need to focus on those that abuse the system and sue doctors for a pay-check. For example, my wife has a colleague that was recently sued after seeing a patient one time. The patient had a problem in the ER and the doctor went with 'the normal treatment'. What the parents didn't tell the hospital, doctor, nurses, or anyone was that the little girl had an allergy to penicillin. Next thing you know the doc was in court. The parents offered to settle out of court for like $200,000. The insurance company went for it. A few weeks later they find out that the parents had done this before.

It's not that one thing is broken in the medical system, it's that it is all broken and all filled with greed. From the drug companies all the way to the trial lawyers, from the hospital systems to the HMOs, they are all geared at making money and not at their primary goal of making people better. And it is really nice that they all give money to their favorite governmental officials to keep the cash flow a coming.

Sorry for the rant.... :P

[yankeedem]

24. Then the insurance company lawyer was negligent

Discovery would have revealed that the plantiff was an opportunist and the wouldn't have settled.

Doctors should stop blaming their customers for their problems.

[Kelvin Mace]

2. If a commander-in-chief's screw up

costs you a leg, you get a crappy prosthetic and crappy medical care for life, so why not?

David Allen
www.thoughtcrimes.org

[Mojambo]

3. But really, how much does a plastic leg cost anyway? n/t

[oneighty]

6. You are joking?

180

[Mojambo]

9. Clearly, yes.

[oneighty]

14. Good!

Hee hee hee!

Laughing!

180

[Maddy McCall]

5. A doctor's screw up ALMOST did cost me my right leg.

Had a mangled leg after a go-cart wreck. Doctor said, "It won't need surgery."

Went for a second opinion, which pissed off doctor mentioned above. Second opinion came from a sports med doctor. He said "Definitely will need surgery. Your knee is in two pieces with a space between the two pieces, and your miniscus is shredded."

It took all kinds of finagling red tape to get the first doctor to "release" me to the second doc. Second doc did surgery, inserted four or five screws, repaired my miniscus, and I am walking fine.

First doctor had put a plaster cast on me from hip to toe. Second doctor LAUGHED at first doctor's ineptitutde, took off the plaster, and put me in a free motion brace. He said that if I had stayed in the plaster cast for six weeks, I would have lost total movement of my knee. With second doctor, I was in physical therapy three days after the surgery to regain motion in my knee. Now, you wouldn't even know that I had had such an injury, thanks to second doc.

The first doctor deserves to be sued. The second doctor saved the first, in my case, because, since I am fine today, I have no desire to sue the first. I do know that he has been sued countless times, though.

Anyway, that's my story/

[Vanje]

8. Would'nt be a shame if that first doctor had to quit his practice?

I think not!

[DU9598]

12. Doctor house of the month

The Iowa Trial Lawyer's Association discussed looking up the addresses of a few of the poor doctors who had to "leave" the business. We thought it would be fun to share them with the local underground papers for publishing.

[Maddy McCall]

15. He was in a car accident several years back...

and he hasn't been "right" since. Sad thing is that people know this yet they still go to him. I had no choice. He was the physician who was called to the ER when I was taken there after the accident.

I know how to play the law, though, so I was able to transfer to another physician. Most people don't know their rights, so they stay with Doctor No. 1 simply because he "refuses to transfer" them.

Anyway, the guy isn't right. I could look at my own x-ray and tell that I would need surgery. I think I, a history professor, would be a better bone doc than the one mentioned in my posts. :-)

[idiosyncratic]

19. Sounds similar to a guy I knew a few years back

He was in a bad car wreck with a horrible injury to his leg.

When he was well enough to go back home to Chicago, his doctors there said he would never walk normally again.

He packed up and moved back to Sun Valley, Idaho where he had been initially hospitalized. Since those doctors are used to bad sports injuries, they knew how to treat his injury.

After a long convalescence, he was out biking, hiking and skiing again.

He never moved back to Chicago . . .

[Maddy McCall]

21. That exactly mirrors my story.

I had to go out of town for the surgery, and I had to travel three times each week to the city where the sports med doctor practices for physical therapy.

The second doc--the sports med doc--is an angel in my eyes. The first one, who still practices in my hometown, is pure evil. Most of the patients he sees (this is Mississippi) are Medicaid/Medicare patients, so he feels he can get away with bad treatment.

And this is who Bush is protecting. All I have to say is THANK GOD FOR THE PATIENT'S BILL OF RIGHTS and for my awareness of the bill of rights...if more people were aware of their rights, they wouldn't see suck-ass doctors.

[tridim]

16. This is just one of the many things that will piss off Bush voters

when it hits home in a few years. I hate paying for the idiocy of others, but that just seems to be the way it is in America now.

[Career Prole]

18. I would wager that people who go into the medical field

for humanitarian reasons or scientific curiosity screw up a hell of a lot less than those who become doctors for the prestige or merely to make a killing. Ouch! Sorry about that pun.
For example, Mr. and Mrs. Daddy Warbucks buying young Walter Warbucks an M.D. from Harvard Medical seems just as likely a scenario as Poppy and Babs Bush buying Dim Son an MBA from Harvard, and we all know how many "patients" Chimpy has killed with his store-bought business acumen.
I think we may just have a bumper crop of piss-poor docs that needs culling.

[idiosyncratic]

20. The woman whose breasts were amputated due to pathologists error

didn't think that disfigurement was only worth $250,000 either.

There are so many horrific stories of bad doctors making repeated bad mistakes. If they get off so easy, where is their motivation to quit or improve (if that would be possible)?

[smurfygirl]

22. has anyone bothered to release the amount of profit

these insurance providers are making yearly. How come Bush doesn't look at those figures? And 250,000 is not enough money to cover your rehabilitation and the cost of a custom made leg. Lets cut off Bush's right hand since he doesn't really need it anyway. I bet we could raise the 250,000 needed in just one day.

[BiggJawn]

25. That $250,000 is the "Pain and Suffering" money.

Presumably you could recover the costs of rehab. But Shrubby is proposing that ANY award would be dribbled out over 20 years, not paid in a lump-sum...That's 20 years AFTER the insurance company exhausts all avenues of appeal...

[Blue Diadem]

26. The way I see it

is they have now put a cap on the value of what our lives are worth. 250,000...what a joke. Why can't they just get rid of the s#itty doctors. If a doctor screws up he/she needs to be held accountable.