"I stopped practicing medicine when ..."

By the way, MadMax, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I love your sig.

 

thanks...i freaking love that movie. and i really love that message that the product of your life is more than your salary...even within the context of your career.

 

True enough. Although I'm not sure it's purely a profit motive for doctors. Theyhave never been that way. I have almost no trust for trial lawyers, and of course insurance companies are for profit.

Also, some people argue that caps won't lower premiums. If that's the case, then why do doctors want them so badly? Are they just mistaken? I think even a moderate decrease in costs would be worth it.

 

in my experience, there is nothing inherently less trustworthy about a group of doctors than a group of lawyers...particularly when there's self-interest involved...i've never been a champion for lawyers...quite the contrary...but i don't think i can look at either group and say, "oh, well...if they say it, it must be true."

 

Agreed on that point, MM.

I guess I'm happy with doctors making more money and lawyers making less. Okay, that's not a very brilliant position, so I'll read up on it more.

 

IMO, we should err on the side of the consumer. The people who this will have the most impact on will be people who have legitimate claims and yet can't get a verdict that compensates them. I am not for making med mal plaintiffs fabulously wealthy (actually, I am more against the 33% that the lawyer gets), but this amendment is about changing the Texas constitution to allow the legislature to set limits.

The way things are going, the legislature could decide to cap limits at $50,000 next session and then they might try to expand the limits to other types of lawsuits. What happens once the Democrats take over? If the legislature can set the caps, all of a sudden we could have russian roulette lawsuit caps depending on which way the political wind blows and that is no way to run things in a court of law.

I believe that the reason we have judges is in order to give everyone a fair shot at application of the laws and if a judge feels that a 25 million dollar punitive fine is the best way to make an impact on the doctor or hospital (having the effect of raising their malpractice premiums), so be it. The system certainly needs some changes, but taking the decision out of a judge's hands and giving it to the legislature is a bad idea. This is not the change the system needs.

 

The system certainly needs some changes, but taking the decision out of a judge's hands and giving it to the legislature is a bad idea.

The unfortunate truth is that we are really puting the decision into lobbyist's hands.

 

They are one and the same these days.