Cincinnati, Ohio Personal Injury Blog - Anthony Castelli
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Should We Get Rid of the Personal Injury Attorneys
Why not get Rid of all the Personal Injury Attorneys and All the Lawsuits
Shakespeare's famous line "kill all the lawyers" is an overstatement of course. But its trendy to put down the trial lawyers in their "tassled shoes" as the reason for society's ills from the high cost of medical care to the leaving of industry from a state.
As a personal injury trial lawyer myself, although I do not handle medical malpractice cases, it may sound like I'm beating my own drum when I say there is no real evidence that "frivolous lawsuits" are many in number and certainly frivolous or not lawsuits do not effect the price of healthcare.
Dr Rahul Parikh recently wrote about this issue. Here is what he had to say about defensive medicine causing problems.
"Defensive medicine is just one of the supposed systemic ills that doctors, doctors' lobbies and doctors' insurers invoke when they shill for what they call malpractice reform. Proponents of reform say that defensive medicine, frivolous lawsuits and high premiums are behind the surge in healthcare expenses.
Their refrain is familiar to anybody following the healthcare reform debate. The only problem is that it's not true. There's nothing "sure or quick" about changing medical liability laws that will improve healthcare or its costs. Defensive medicine adds very little to healthcare's price tag, and rising malpractice premiums have had very little impact on access to care."
First the doctor took a look at the statistics and found that they did not support such a claim.
After looking at the statistic on claims the doctor took on the notion of frivolous lawsuits . "Tort reformers push the notion that junk lawsuits dominate the legal system. Studies that show that 80 percent of claims are settled without payment to the patient and that when a case does make it to trial, doctors win 89 percent of the cases."
. Researchers from Harvard published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that was designed to avoid the limits, and the biases, of prior research. What they found kills the notion of frivolous lawsuits. It suggests that most people who sue are suing for good reason.
Instead of a swamp of frivolous lawsuits, what the data shows is a system that functions. Insubstantial claims tend to collapse, while the medical industry usually opts to pay off injured patients instead of going to trial. The doctors and the insurers choose to fight to win when they think they can, and when there is enough money at stake, and usually do win.
Finally lets deal with the last two arguements the insurance industry uses. The first is that defensive medicine drives up the cost of care. The second is that skyrocketing malpractice premiums are driving doctors out of business, cutting patients' access to care. In both cases, however, the facts don't substantiate those claims.
"Recent analyses show that the effect of defensive medicine on costs is marginal.
Another study concluded that "Direct reforms (caps on damages, abolition of punitive damages, eliminating mandatory prejudgment interest, and collateral source offset) did not significantly reduce payments for Medicare-covered services."
The Congressional budget office also took a hard look at the claim that rising malpractice premiums were driving doctors out of business and thus cutting access to care. While the report did find instances of reduced access to emergency surgery and newborn delivery, albeit in scattered, often rural, areas, it also found that many reported shortages of healthcare providers could not be substantiated or did not widely affect access to healthcare. Traditionally, rural areas are where healthcare is scarce anyway.
The doctor made a telling conclusion about what is really behind the rise in premiums citing the need for insurane companies to make a buck.
"It would seem that after all of this, what we are left with is a crisis not of the medical-legal system, but of the economics of malpractice insurance, as doctors have seen their premiums skyrocket in recent years. But even that can not be pinned strictly on the risk of insuring physicians. Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, notes "that a historical pattern has been established that insurance rates rise also based on the investment market ... Earlier 'crises' similar to todays 'crisis' were due to declining investment fortunes and failed pricing practices of the insurance industry rather than an increase in medical malpractice filings and awards. Then, as now, the insurance industry covered its losses by raising rates dramatically, then blamed the lawyers of innocent patients rightfully seeking compensation for negligence-related injuries."
Tort reform is not going to save one extra life. Plus it will place the cost of wrongly injured people onto the taxpayer. Why not look for ways to help doctor, hospitals and nurses to prevent medical mistakes.
.
Anthony Castelli is a Cincinnati personal injury trial attorney. For more information go to www.castelliaw.com or call him at 621-2345
Shakespeare's famous line "kill all the lawyers" is an overstatement of course. But its trendy to put down the trial lawyers in their "tassled shoes" as the reason for society's ills from the high cost of medical care to the leaving of industry from a state.
As a personal injury trial lawyer myself, although I do not handle medical malpractice cases, it may sound like I'm beating my own drum when I say there is no real evidence that "frivolous lawsuits" are many in number and certainly frivolous or not lawsuits do not effect the price of healthcare.
Dr Rahul Parikh recently wrote about this issue. Here is what he had to say about defensive medicine causing problems.
"Defensive medicine is just one of the supposed systemic ills that doctors, doctors' lobbies and doctors' insurers invoke when they shill for what they call malpractice reform. Proponents of reform say that defensive medicine, frivolous lawsuits and high premiums are behind the surge in healthcare expenses.
Their refrain is familiar to anybody following the healthcare reform debate. The only problem is that it's not true. There's nothing "sure or quick" about changing medical liability laws that will improve healthcare or its costs. Defensive medicine adds very little to healthcare's price tag, and rising malpractice premiums have had very little impact on access to care."
First the doctor took a look at the statistics and found that they did not support such a claim.
After looking at the statistic on claims the doctor took on the notion of frivolous lawsuits . "Tort reformers push the notion that junk lawsuits dominate the legal system. Studies that show that 80 percent of claims are settled without payment to the patient and that when a case does make it to trial, doctors win 89 percent of the cases."
. Researchers from Harvard published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that was designed to avoid the limits, and the biases, of prior research. What they found kills the notion of frivolous lawsuits. It suggests that most people who sue are suing for good reason.
Instead of a swamp of frivolous lawsuits, what the data shows is a system that functions. Insubstantial claims tend to collapse, while the medical industry usually opts to pay off injured patients instead of going to trial. The doctors and the insurers choose to fight to win when they think they can, and when there is enough money at stake, and usually do win.
Finally lets deal with the last two arguements the insurance industry uses. The first is that defensive medicine drives up the cost of care. The second is that skyrocketing malpractice premiums are driving doctors out of business, cutting patients' access to care. In both cases, however, the facts don't substantiate those claims.
"Recent analyses show that the effect of defensive medicine on costs is marginal.
Another study concluded that "Direct reforms (caps on damages, abolition of punitive damages, eliminating mandatory prejudgment interest, and collateral source offset) did not significantly reduce payments for Medicare-covered services."
The Congressional budget office also took a hard look at the claim that rising malpractice premiums were driving doctors out of business and thus cutting access to care. While the report did find instances of reduced access to emergency surgery and newborn delivery, albeit in scattered, often rural, areas, it also found that many reported shortages of healthcare providers could not be substantiated or did not widely affect access to healthcare. Traditionally, rural areas are where healthcare is scarce anyway.
The doctor made a telling conclusion about what is really behind the rise in premiums citing the need for insurane companies to make a buck.
"It would seem that after all of this, what we are left with is a crisis not of the medical-legal system, but of the economics of malpractice insurance, as doctors have seen their premiums skyrocket in recent years. But even that can not be pinned strictly on the risk of insuring physicians. Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, notes "that a historical pattern has been established that insurance rates rise also based on the investment market ... Earlier 'crises' similar to todays 'crisis' were due to declining investment fortunes and failed pricing practices of the insurance industry rather than an increase in medical malpractice filings and awards. Then, as now, the insurance industry covered its losses by raising rates dramatically, then blamed the lawyers of innocent patients rightfully seeking compensation for negligence-related injuries."
Tort reform is not going to save one extra life. Plus it will place the cost of wrongly injured people onto the taxpayer. Why not look for ways to help doctor, hospitals and nurses to prevent medical mistakes.
.
Anthony Castelli is a Cincinnati personal injury trial attorney. For more information go to www.castelliaw.com or call him at 621-2345
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