"I stopped practicing medicine when ..."

You've seen the commercial on TV. Dr. Evelyn Tobias-Merrill tells the tall tale of how she quit practicing medicine when her insurance went up 300% in one year.

Here's the real story behind the commercial:

http://www.polstate.com/archives/004017.html

Tuesday | September 02, 2003

TX: Proposition 12 Lobbying Heats Up
TV ads in support of Proposition 12 have started to run in a few local markets. Prop 12 is the proposed constitutional amendment that would allow limits on certain damage awards in civil lawsuits. The ad features two doctors described as family physicians. Dr. Dr. Antonio Falcon is described as a family physician from Rio Grande City, and is co-chair of Yes on 12. The second physician is Dr. Evelyn Tobias-Merrill from Corpus Christi. In the ad, she says that while she has never been sued, she has been forced to give up her practice because of rising medical liability insurance costs.

Dr. Tobias-Merrill was also a featured speaker at a rally held last week at Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi in support of proposition 12. Besides Governor Rick Perry, a number of doctors supportive of the measure were heard from, including Tobias-Merrill.

When Dr. Evelyn Tobias-Merrill's insurance rates rose 300 percent, she was forced to leave a local family practice position she had been building for four years.

"My premium had already been going up every year, and I was already maxed out on what I could afford to pay," …"As a family practice doctor, I have a wonderful relationship with my patients," Tobias-Merrill said. "I have very, very dear patients, and I'm just brokenhearted.

This article goes on to mention that Dr. Tobias-Merrill happens to be married to Rick Merrill, who is president and CEO of Driscoll. This fact is not mentioned in the TV ads. Dr. Tobias-Merrill is also a past (2001) member of the board of directors of something called the Texas Lyceum Association. This group is described on its website as follows:

The Texas Lyceum Association, Inc., is a non-profit, non-partisan, statewide organization whose purpose is to identify and develop the next generation of top leadership in the State of Texas; to educate its Directors by identifying and exploring the interrelationships of the major issues facing Texas and bring a better understanding of these issues to the state’s key decision makers; and to promote an appreciation of the responsibilities of stewardship of the values, traditions, and resources of Texas.

…The Texas Lyceum is an organization of people that are active, diverse, and motivated to make a positive difference in our state. We are proud of our membership and alumni, and the difference they have and will continue to make on a daily basis not only at the municipal, regional, and state level, but at the national and occasionally international level as well.

Although the Texas Lyceum Association appears to be ostensibly non-partisan, the list of alumni mentioned includes a high preponderance of Republicans, including G.W. Bush, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Rick Perry, and Bobby Eberle (who is President and CEO of GOPUSA). This fact alone is probably not too surprising; this is Texas, after all, and any organization or group that focuses on public policy issues is going to inevitably have a lot or Republicans involved in it. What is harder to discern is whether the relative lack of Democratic names in this list reflects the relatively weak statewide strength of the Democrats in recent years, or a decidedly conservative bias on the part of this organization. If the latter, then it is questionable whether someone like Tobias-Merrill should be acting as the spokesman for Proposition 12. Indeed, even if the Lyceum Association is as nonpartisan as some of its rhetoric declares it to be, it clearly is an organization for “activists”, i.e., people who desire to have some influence on public policy. Given this, it’s clear that Dr. Tobias-Merrill is not simply a poor family doctor with a gripe against the current malpractice rates. To borrow the Lyceum Association’s own words, she is someone who is active, …and motivated to make a positive difference in our state. In other words, she may very well have an agenda, which the TV spots do a good job of hiding.

The Chronicle also covers the ad blitz.

Finally, from the Austin American Statesman comes this story about how the state’s 28,000 physicians may attempt to actively lobby their patients to vote for Prop 12.

The Texas Medical Association is encouraging the state's 38,000 physicians to actively lobby their patients to vote for Proposition 12.

But trolling for votes among patients when they come in for treatment might stray beyond the bounds of acceptable ethics, said the director of a medical ethics program at the University of Texas.

"There is no place for politicking in the consulting room," said Ron Carson, director of the Institute for Medical Humanities at the UT Medical Branch in Galveston, which researches ethical issues and conducts courses for medical students and doctors.

"There is absolutely a line that ought not to be crossed in situations like this."

Steve Levine, an association spokesman, disagreed, saying that a doctor has an "ethical obligation to change those laws that he or she does not think are correct."

Levine points to guidelines issued by the American Medical Association: "It is natural that . . . physicians will express their views to patients or their families. However, communications by telephone or other modalities with patients and their families about political matters must be conducted with the utmost sensitivity to patients' vulnerability and desire for privacy."

Pam Baggett, spokeswoman for the Texas association, said doctors will be sensitive when they raise the subject.

If "someone's in labor, you really don't want to talk to them about Proposition 12," Baggett said. "But if it's the right time or place, we're encouraging them to talk about it."

On its Web site, the Texas Medical Association is offering doctors supplies of posters, lapel stickers and cards to pass out to "staff, patients, family and friends."

"This election will be won on the ground," says the Web site, which also suggests that doctors call former patients and encourage them to write letters to the editors of newspapers supporting Proposition 12.

"Can you recall a patient who was/is particularly grateful for your help in the last few years?" the Web site asks doctors. "Can you call that patient and ask for his help now?"

Although the association and its member doctors are well within ethical guidelines by lobbying for Proposition 12 generally, Carson said, injecting a political message into individual doctor-patient relationships is inappropriate.

"There's a distinction between collective (lobbying) and an individual doctor and an individual patient," he said. "When I walk into the doctor's office, I don't want to hear about an issue like this. I want my health care taken care of."

It will be interesting to see how this little effort goes over with the public.

 

Summary: she's a Republican political activist who is married to chairman of the board of a Hospital Corporation, and she allegedly stopped practicing medicine after 4 years because her insurance went up 300%.

Now, they go up for three reasons:

1. this insured is high risk or has a high loss experience

2. this insured has had a dramatic increase in revenues, and therefore the risk increases dramatically.

3. this insured has entered a field with a high loss experience


It would appear that either she was individually a high risk, or her revenues from practicing went up.

I'm betting she quit practicing because she doesn't need to and doesn't want to. She's gonna run for something.

 

I don't accept that has happened, but to the extent that it did, they obviously woke up and realized they were living in West Virginia. I'm guessing they don't get a lot of quality grads there in much of anything, and certainly not medicine.


I don't know what story you've read about West Virginia or Nevada, but the liability crisis among doctors in Texas is a fraud. It doesn't exist. Do you really think that the rates are so high the doctors can't afford them?

Go read the blue sheets and see how many cases are med mal. Very damn few. Houston has over 16,000 attorneys, and there aren't more than a few hundred of them making a living off med malpractice, on both sides of the docket.

Doctors want to keep more money so they want liability limits. That is all this is about. More jingle for the docs. Less for claimants and their attorneys. There are tens of thousands of doctors in Texas, and they aren't going anywhere, and they aren't going to stop practicing medicine.

The sky is not falling.

This is an example of a special interest using the Republican party as its willing paramour. Doctors and the hospitals they own make more money, and they feed the campaign coffers to reward the party for setting up this election. It's very anti-democratic, setting it up to assure a low turnout. Very devious, and typical of the brownshirts.

 

I don't know what INDUSTRY you're in, but you sound like a shill for the medical or insurance industry.

I see them differently than you do. Let's just leave it at that.

I don't intend to spend a day or an hour trying to convince you that you're wrong.

 

I could argue this whole issue of whether tort reform is needed, but why do it? I've never seen anyone who changed their mind about it one way or the other. Whatever you believe guides what you think. If you think it's a problem because you've listened to nonstop propaganda since you were 10 years old, that is how you will see the issue.

If you want to stop lawsuit abuse, you're aiming at the wrong place. The primary abuse of the system comes from big corporations and monied interests, not trial lawyers, not personal injury plaintiffs, and not med mal cases.

The hardest case to make is med mal. The most protections are for med mal defendants.

The courthouse is a place where the monied interests abuse the non-monied interests, and don't tell me different. I've spent the last 25 plus years there. You want to win? Bring cash, and lots of it.

Big Corporations, hospital and insurance interests - these are the guys who clog the system with motion after motion. These are the guys who breach agreements with lesser entities and use the litigation process to justify it, to weasel out of it.

 

don't confuse him with facts

he's got some from advocacy groups that tell them different, and he's eating it up with a soup ladle



as you say, malpractice always has been and will continue to be a small, small part of all medical costs. They should call this THE ACT TO PAY FOR MORE HUMMERS AND MERCEDES FOR DOCTORS.

 

You're so cute when you get that shrill voice.

I thank you for your opinion on the topic, but like I said, what do I care what you think of me? You went to Texas Tech. Anyone who goes to Texas Tech has no place being haughty. I mean, come on, you can tell us. How many good schools turned you down before you decided it was Tech or nothing?

 

I'm glad to know they paid you.

I'd hate to think you used YOUR money to go there.