One of the reasons for expensive healthcare is the liability insurance doctors have to carry. This insurance covers payments made to settle patient lawsuits.
What if patients signed an agreement, which caps the amount of lawsuit payouts? This is of course subject to the condition that doctors limit the fees they charge to these patients.
Hopefully, reduction in potential liability claims should reduce the liability insurance and that should be passed on to the final consumer.Involvement of HMOs and insurance companies makes this complicated, but worth a shot against the increasing costs.
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Well, I'm not sure I could be any more AGAINST this idea.
Tomorrow, literally, I start my trial for medical malpractice of an orthopedic surgeon. I'll skip the boring details, but suffice to say, he messed up my shoulder so bad, after not treating me correctly, that I've had to have a total shoulder replacement. I'm only 34.
My county limits liability to $550K, which may sound like a lot, but I've got an entire lifetime ahead, with multiple revisions to the replacement, and can never play with my toddlers they way I always wanted.
So, you try to convince me that's a good idea.
I am sorry for the pain you (ThousandFaces) had to go through. Of course, if I was in your position, $550K would not have sufficed. Hope your shoulder is much better now.
With the $550K limit, are the health insurance costs in your county any lower than in other places?
Anyways, I think $550K is an arbitary number set by some politicians. I am not suggesting picking of such a random number. The limit will have to be based on the insured person's salary, income potential and some other similar parameters. Allowing jurors to penalize the doctor for millions of dollars for not-so-major mistakes does not seem very fair. The doctor should definitely be held accountable for his/her mistakes. They should face a financial penalty in addition to probation or revocation of their license.
Overall, I don't think it is right to allow doctors and insurance companies to charge thousands of dollars for relativley frequent procedures.
If healthcare is too expensive because the costs of liability insurance are included in the cost of treatment, why not make insurance optional? Patients that don't want to waive or cap liability would have to pay the additional cost of the insurance.
Having large awards makes it in the hospitals interest to attack medical mistakes. If the cost is high, they will be encouraged to invest more in making fewer mistakes.
The number of mistakes in the medical industry is severe. The mistakes are a result of overtired doctors, miscommunication with nurses and staff shift changes, and a culture of discouragement of admitting mistakes.
Without mistakes being admitted, no one is aware of them. They also make patients feel abandoned and then they find out that a mistake was made.
Some hospitals and insurance companies are finding that they minimize the cost of mistakes by freely admitting them and being very open with damaged patients.