[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by Twilight Flyer

I think that all lawyers should be banned from entering any hospital or doctor's office. Then, after they have all died out, health care costs can return to a normal level.

A skanky looking blonde is at a bar, standing right next to a blood-sucker in a suit. Having already downed a few power drinks, she turned around, faced him, looked him straight in the eye and said, "Listen here good looking, I screw anybody, anytime, anywhere, your place, my place, in the car, front door, back door, on the ground, standing up, sitting down, naked or with clothes on, dirty, clean .. . It doesn't matter to me. I've been doing it ever since I got out of college and I just love it."

Eyes now wide with interest, he responded, "No kidding. I'm a lawyer too. What firm are you with?"

[Windwalker]

Originally Posted by RebelDarlin

I spent years int he Insurance industry and my personal opinion is that it is nothing more than a legalized extortion racket. At least when Al Capone ran Chicago you knew you were covered. ;-)

I've been saying that about the insurance industry for years. And, the more insurance coverage is required by law, (captive audience) the worse it's going to get.

[repete]

Originally Posted by Windwalker

I've been saying that about the insurance industry for years. And, the more insurance coverage is required by law, (captive audience) the worse it's going to get.

But Windy, don't you realize this is gonna increase competition thus bring down the cost of healthcare?

[Windwalker]

Originally Posted by repete

But Windy, don't you realize this is gonna increase competition thus bring down the cost of healthcare?

Yeah, right. Fewer hospitals to go to, and you ARE going to be insured by someone. I can certainly see the costs going down. Nothing quite like having a cigar butt sewed up into your appendix scar.:hellno:

[Ptarmigan]

Originally Posted by RebelDarlin

And Washington completely ignored any kind of torte reform (because politicians are mostly lawyers) which could help reduce Malpractice premiums.

It's absolutely correct that tort reform has been ignored by DC. The reason for this may be that some politicians are lawyers, although we have been discussing this on one of the other threads and only about a third of them are actually lawyers. In addition, most of the state tort reform measures passed in the last few years have been written by.....lawyers.

There is however a very good reason as to why DC has failed to legislate any kind of meaningful tort reform (which not only do I support, but in a previous life actually lobbied for), and that is the the majority of tort cases are not heard in the Federal Courts. Tort claims, which against doctors are typically medical malpractice through negligence, are subject to different rules in different states, because some states have enacted reform and some have not.

Plaintiff's attorneys (personal injury lawyers) are more numerous in states that do not have meaningful reform measures on the books. Texas has a handful, they have enacted reform, Nevada has thousands, they have not (incidentally Las Vegas has a huge shortage of OB/GYNs, at one point there were only one or two covering the entire metro).

The problem comes with balancing the rights of the plaintiff who genuinely has been wronged, against the needs of society who is now being significantly impacted by a system run amok.

As I have said, I will, eventually practice law, but I'd sooner work in McDonalds than become a plaintiff's medical malpractice attorney. In all likelihood, I'm either going to go prosecutor, or corporate law. The large corporate law firms defend clients against malpractice claims, and conventional wisdom is to respond to a lawsuit against a hospital by burying the opposing counsel (who almost always works for a tiny firm) with so many motions, interrogatories, subpoenas and deposition appointments that he gets completely swamped and accepts a settlement. To do this, a large law firm will receive a lawsuit, and then assign a team of associate attorneys, who have been out of law school 1-5 years to the case, they then work at $3-500 per hour per attorney, completely overwhelming the already busy plaintiff's lawyer. Someone somewhere then gets a bill for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, the doctor's rates go up anyway because the insurer has paid out on the legal bills, the plaintiff gets about half of the settlement, the plaintiff's attorney gets the rest and the large law firm chalks up another win. That case saw a court room for eight minutes, if at all. The doctor technically won his case, because it was a no fault settlement, the insurance company is happy because while they paid out a few grand for lawyers and settlements, they didn't have a jury award millions, and all the costs get passed on to someone else.

In a state that has enacted lawsuit reform, same plaintiff goes to see the lawyer, immediately upon filing they all go before a judge, before anything else gets done. The judge looks over the evidence and decides only if someone has actually been harmed. This is similar to a preliminary hearing in a criminal case, guilt or innocence are not decided, merely is there evidence that says someone has been harmed, and is there some evidence that points to the defendant being responsible. This procedure filters out the crap. So when great aunt Mildred has had an operation on her crotch and it's gone wrong, she goes to court, and produces some medical evidence of her now damaged crotch. Judge thinks there's a case to answer, and off everyone goes.

The other area where things are badly messed up is punitive damages. Lets say we're a year down the road and great aunt Mildred has won her case, the Doctor didn't get enough sleep the night before he operated on her crotch because he was watching porn. He was tired, and made a mistake. So, Mildred gets paid for her Medical bills, to fix the crotch, she gets paid for her pain and suffering, she gets paid for her out of pocket expenses and future expenses and bills. At this point she has been made whole again, by way of monetary compensation. Her crotch is all better and she's not out of pocket any money, and she's been paid for her pain. What happens then is the court (jury) considers the amount of punitive damages to award. What should we charge a doctor, monetarily, who spent the evening watching porno, and was too tired to do a good job of crotch surgery? Well, there's two ways of looking at this. his mistake has already been expensive, should we really punish him by awarding more damages (which often are not covered by malpractice insurance? I say we should, and I say we should because I am on a forum full of truck drivers. Let's say you stay up all night, in the cab, watching hardcore midget porn, (you know you do). You get up the next day and drive the truck down a two land highway and your eyes close just for a second, and in that second, great Aunt Mildred brakes for a otter crossing the road, and bang, you hit her. She's injured and her Chevy Aveo is all messed up. She has to have an operation on her crotch, requiring medical bills and whatnot. The doctor gets punitive damages when he messes up, but he's also compensated to the tune of several hundred k a year. You don't make that, and you, unlike the doctor could have the authorities crawling all over your truck, looking at your hours of service records, your computer, where they find out you were looking and monkey porn or whatever it was, and your information goes into the big computer thing, where in the future, you can't get another driving job because prospective employers can see that you had an injury accident. Your livelihood is shot.

What we should do, is cap the punitive damages, at say $250,000. Mildred gets some cash, porno watching doctor is punished, and the damage to his livelihood is commensurate with the damage to yours if you do commit the same level of negligence and nobody is treated dreadfully unfairly.

[Ptarmigan]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

A skanky looking blonde is at a bar, standing right next to a blood-sucker in a suit. Having already downed a few power drinks, she turned around, faced him, looked him straight in the eye and said, "Listen here good looking, I screw anybody, anytime, anywhere, your place, my place, in the car, front door, back door, on the ground, standing up, sitting down, naked or with clothes on, dirty, clean .. . It doesn't matter to me. I've been doing it ever since I got out of college and I just love it."

Eyes now wide with interest, he responded, "No kidding. I'm a lawyer too. What firm are you with?"

Do you happen to have this chick's telephone number? She sounds like tremendous fun.

[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by Ptarmigan

It's absolutely correct that tort reform has been ignored by DC. The reason for this may be that some politicians are lawyers, although we have been discussing this on one of the other threads and only about a third of them are actually lawyers. In addition, most of the state tort reform measures passed in the last few years have been written by.....lawyers.

There is however a very good reason as to why DC has failed to legislate any kind of meaningful tort reform (which not only do I support, but in a previous life actually lobbied for), and that is the the majority of tort cases are not heard in the Federal Courts. Tort claims, which against doctors are typically medical malpractice through negligence, are subject to different rules in different states, because some states have enacted reform and some have not.

Plaintiff's attorneys (personal injury lawyers) are more numerous in states that do not have meaningful reform measures on the books. Texas has a handful, they have enacted reform, Nevada has thousands, they have not (incidentally Las Vegas has a huge shortage of OB/GYNs, at one point there were only one or two covering the entire metro).

The problem comes with balancing the rights of the plaintiff who genuinely has been wronged, against the needs of society who is now being significantly impacted by a system run amok.

As I have said, I will, eventually practice law, but I'd sooner work in McDonalds than become a plaintiff's medical malpractice attorney. In all likelihood, I'm either going to go prosecutor, or corporate law. The large corporate law firms defend clients against malpractice claims, and conventional wisdom is to respond to a lawsuit against a hospital by burying the opposing counsel (who almost always works for a tiny firm) with so many motions, interrogatories, subpoenas and deposition appointments that he gets completely swamped and accepts a settlement. To do this, a large law firm will receive a lawsuit, and then assign a team of associate attorneys, who have been out of law school 1-5 years to the case, they then work at $3-500 per hour per attorney, completely overwhelming the already busy plaintiff's lawyer. Someone somewhere then gets a bill for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, the doctor's rates go up anyway because the insurer has paid out on the legal bills, the plaintiff gets about half of the settlement, the plaintiff's attorney gets the rest and the large law firm chalks up another win. That case saw a court room for eight minutes, if at all. The doctor technically won his case, because it was a no fault settlement, the insurance company is happy because while they paid out a few grand for lawyers and settlements, they didn't have a jury award millions, and all the costs get passed on to someone else.

In a state that has enacted lawsuit reform, same plaintiff goes to see the lawyer, immediately upon filing they all go before a judge, before anything else gets done. The judge looks over the evidence and decides only if someone has actually been harmed. This is similar to a preliminary hearing in a criminal case, guilt or innocence are not decided, merely is there evidence that says someone has been harmed, and is there some evidence that points to the defendant being responsible. This procedure filters out the crap. So when great aunt Mildred has had an operation on her crotch and it's gone wrong, she goes to court, and produces some medical evidence of her now damaged crotch. Judge thinks there's a case to answer, and off everyone goes.

The other area where things are badly messed up is punitive damages. Lets say we're a year down the road and great aunt Mildred has won her case, the Doctor didn't get enough sleep the night before he operated on her crotch because he was watching porn. He was tired, and made a mistake. So, Mildred gets paid for her Medical bills, to fix the crotch, she gets paid for her pain and suffering, she gets paid for her out of pocket expenses and future expenses and bills. At this point she has been made whole again, by way of monetary compensation. Her crotch is all better and she's not out of pocket any money, and she's been paid for her pain. What happens then is the court (jury) considers the amount of punitive damages to award. What should we charge a doctor, monetarily, who spent the evening watching porno, and was too tired to do a good job of crotch surgery? Well, there's two ways of looking at this. his mistake has already been expensive, should we really punish him by awarding more damages (which often are not covered by malpractice insurance? I say we should, and I say we should because I am on a forum full of truck drivers. Let's say you stay up all night, in the cab, watching hardcore midget porn, (you know you do). You get up the next day and drive the truck down a two land highway and your eyes close just for a second, and in that second, great Aunt Mildred brakes for a otter crossing the road, and bang, you hit her. She's injured and her Chevy Aveo is all messed up. She has to have an operation on her crotch, requiring medical bills and whatnot. The doctor gets punitive damages when he messes up, but he's also compensated to the tune of several hundred k a year. You don't make that, and you, unlike the doctor could have the authorities crawling all over your truck, looking at your hours of service records, your computer, where they find out you were looking and monkey porn or whatever it was, and your information goes into the big computer thing, where in the future, you can't get another driving job because prospective employers can see that you had an injury accident. Your livelihood is shot.

What we should do, is cap the punitive damages, at say $250,000. Mildred gets some cash, porno watching doctor is punished, and the damage to his livelihood is commensurate with the damage to yours if you do commit the same level of negligence and nobody is treated dreadfully unfairly.

I fixed your post. The highlighted in red is all that had any value.

The reason tort reform has been ignored, is because the Progressive Party has for years been lavishly financed by Blood-suckers. Besides the golden egg, they gain many favors, like off shore accounts, providing the Congress with drugs, prostitution, ... whadda ya need?

.................................................. ....

.................................................. .................................................. .......Corporate Blood-sucker
.................................................. .................................................. .. Specialty... Makin' people STFU

[Ptarmigan]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

I fixed your post. The highlighted in red is all that had any value.

The reason tort reform has been ignored, is because the Progressive Party has for years been lavishly financed by Blood-suckers. Besides the golden egg, they gain many favors, like off shore accounts, providing the Congress with drugs, prostitution, ... whadda ya need?

.................................................. ....

.................................................. .................................................. .......Corporate Blood-sucker
.................................................. .................................................. .. Specialty... Makin' people STFU

I'm curious as to how you think the Federal Government can fix tort reform when each state has a very different tort system, and most medical malpractice suits are in the state courts. Do educate us, you're clearly such an expert

[Roadhog]

Oh sure...you think us gomers don't realize how these vipers have protected their "good thang." :lol: :roll:

[Ptarmigan]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

Oh sure...you think us gomers don't realize how these vipers have protected their "good thang." :lol: :roll:

So in other words you don't know how a federal legislature would fix an issue with some state court systems. Thought so