A friend of mine sent this link to a story at Fox News. Voters in Florida have approved a measure that will suspend a doctor's license if that doctor has three malpractice payouts. As interesting as this concept is, that's not what I want to discuss.
Instead, take a look at this quote:
Yelverton is among the physicians caught in the middle of the fight.
Like thousands of other Florida doctors, he has never gotten in trouble for making a mistake. He has delivered more than 10,000 babies in his 33-year career — enough, he notes, to make a "whole little town."
But the 63-year-old increasingly feels it was just not worth it to be a doctor in this state, and he now works in the front office of his practice to develop procedures to reduce the risk of medical mistakes.
One reason he stopped seeing patients and delivering babies was the increase of the cost of his malpractice insurance, and the feeling that at any time he could lose a bundle in a lawsuit, whether it had merit or not.
"The hardest thing about giving up a very successful practice of 33 years is that your patients have come to rely on you for what they consider quality medicine and they have to find someone else," Yelverton said. "And it's one less experienced doctor."
So, in 33 years, and through 10,000+ deliveries, this doctor had never had a malpractice payout – but malpractice insurance rates are driving him out of medicine. Will someone please explain to me doctors don't lobby for insurance rate caps instead of trying to cap malpractice payouts?
So right, Corporate media and government officials refuse to admit any cause-effect relationship. No one asks why are malpractice insurance premiums so high? We just accept the lies told to us, like malpractice premiums are high because of frivelous lawsuits. History may be a pretty good indicator, some states already have caps on medical malpractice judgements, and their is no consistent relationship between caps and premiums. In other words, some states that have implemented reform, have higher premiums than states that don’t have caps. The realty is insurance companies continue to rack up profits year after year, regardless of bad or good economies, tort reform or anything else. They raise premiums because they are almost completely unregulated. But until there is some seperation between corporations and our federal government (currently there is none) don’t expect any attack on insurance companies, you don’t hear anything about them. Recently, congress voted on limiting insurance premiums increases to 13% for 2005. This fact, combined with the fact that insurance companies pay out only a tiny fraction of revenues tells you everything you need to know about the criminal industry known as insurance. All insurance companies should be not-for-profit organizations. They should have no incentive at all to choose between paying legitimate claims or increasing their bottom line. The very purpose of insurance is to protect the consumer. In a free society, you don’t profit over protecting the consumer, that would be tantamount to the police and fire department, becoming privatized, and choosing who they should help, and not help. Does that make any sense to anyone? But that is exactly what happens every day.
Regarding the above mentioned Fox News article. This is a great example of propaganda at work. It states that Texas medical liability providers are lowering their premiums by 5%!, Wow, you mean a company that will reap millions of additional revenues as a result of tort reform is going to lower premiums by 5%. Lets see, a doctor paying $100,000 per year in malpractice premiums alone (this is quite ordinary), will now only pay $95,000. Thank god Texas doctors are now back in business. Here is an alternative opinion, maybe, just maybe, if tort reform becomes federal law, insurance companies who will increase malpractice profits by say 15%, will than lower premiums by 5%, and say, SEE! tort reform works! Wake up people, you are being lied to every minute of the day.