Boris
04-22-2004, 03:53 PM
Hartford Courant commentary - Sunday, April 4, 2004
My Colleagues Are Wrecking Health Care
By HENRY KOPEL
I am an attorney, and I am ashamed of what my profession is doing to health care in America. Malpractice lawsuits against physicians - many of which involve cases where no negligence occurred - are causing exorbitant increases in insurance premiums. The broken lawsuit system
is driving up the cost of health care and forcing many excellent physicians
to leave the profession. Yet virtually all legislative efforts to tame the abuses of the system are blocked by the trial lawyers' lobby. My wife is an obstetrician-gynecologist. As is true for most Connecticut obstetricians, her medical-malpractice insurance premium for one year is more than $80,000. This premium is expected to increase by several thousand dollars every year. If she seeks to change jobs or retire, she will need more than $150,000 to maintain lawsuit protection against all past patients - who retain the right to sue for at least 20 years.
Without such insurance, just one lawsuit could devastate our family's assets. Merely paying for a legal defense could easily cost more than $100,000 - even if she wins the case. Those who bring such frivolous lawsuits suffer no penalty for the financial and emotional havoc they cause.
These extraordinary insurance costs also mean that, contrary to popular
myth, many obstetricians do not have the high incomes commonly attributed to doctors. Yet obstetricians have some of the most stressful
schedules in modern medicine. They must deal every week with on-call
nights, balancing constant sleep deprivation with the responsibilities of
family. Add to this financial mix the enormous costs of attending medical
school, the resulting debt and the years working as residents at salaries below those of most unskilled workers. The huge financial drain then imposed on the profession by malpractice insurance and ill-considered lawsuits constitutes a substantial injustice. Perhaps these costs would have some justification if the lawsuits served to compensate the victims of malpractice and to weed out the few bad apples among the medical profession. But they do not. One study says very few patients who file claims recover anything, and even successful claims take five years - longer if they go to trial. A large share of the lawsuits have no connection to actual malpractice. Many medical malpractice lawsuits are initiated not because of negligent medical care, but because a baby was born with a tragically debilitating condition despite proper medical care. But the injury presents a story that a skilled trial lawyer can use to sway a jury's sympathy against the supposedly rich and uncaring physician. For
instance, among the lawsuit victories were cases brought against doctors and hospitals for babies born with cerebral palsy. Independent, peer-reviewed research shows that nearly all cerebral palsy cases have nothing to do with the birth procedure, including many cases that have resulted in huge damage judgments. Many of those opposed to lawsuit reform blame insurance companies for the large premium increases, alleging that the companies want to recoup money from bad investments. This is a myth. In fact, virtually all the insurance industry's investments have been in conservative bond funds, the fluctuations of which are far too modest to account for the vast increase in premiums. By contrast, studies convincingly show that damage judgments - especially for the intangible "pain and suffering" - have been escalating far ahead of any rational factors such as inflation.
Connecticut's physicians face some of the highest medical malpractice premiums in the country. Yet both of Connecticut's U.S. senators voted in
February to block a modest reform that would have capped pain-and-suffering verdicts in obstetric lawsuits at $250,000. This reform would have still allowed plaintiffs to be compensated for all medical care and all lost wages, past and future, caused by any medical malpractice. That such a modest reform cannot get past the trial lawyers' lobby should be
cause for alarm among those who wish to preserve the quality of America's obstetric medicine, and among those who expect fairness in
our civil justice system. Both are at risk as long as the broken malpractice-lawsuit system remains immune to reform. Lawyers created this broken system, and they now bear responsibility for helping to fix it.
Henry Kopel is an assistant U.S. attorney in Connecticut.
The views expressed here are solely his own and do not reflect the
views of the Department of Justice.
My Colleagues Are Wrecking Health Care
By HENRY KOPEL
I am an attorney, and I am ashamed of what my profession is doing to health care in America. Malpractice lawsuits against physicians - many of which involve cases where no negligence occurred - are causing exorbitant increases in insurance premiums. The broken lawsuit system
is driving up the cost of health care and forcing many excellent physicians
to leave the profession. Yet virtually all legislative efforts to tame the abuses of the system are blocked by the trial lawyers' lobby. My wife is an obstetrician-gynecologist. As is true for most Connecticut obstetricians, her medical-malpractice insurance premium for one year is more than $80,000. This premium is expected to increase by several thousand dollars every year. If she seeks to change jobs or retire, she will need more than $150,000 to maintain lawsuit protection against all past patients - who retain the right to sue for at least 20 years.
Without such insurance, just one lawsuit could devastate our family's assets. Merely paying for a legal defense could easily cost more than $100,000 - even if she wins the case. Those who bring such frivolous lawsuits suffer no penalty for the financial and emotional havoc they cause.
These extraordinary insurance costs also mean that, contrary to popular
myth, many obstetricians do not have the high incomes commonly attributed to doctors. Yet obstetricians have some of the most stressful
schedules in modern medicine. They must deal every week with on-call
nights, balancing constant sleep deprivation with the responsibilities of
family. Add to this financial mix the enormous costs of attending medical
school, the resulting debt and the years working as residents at salaries below those of most unskilled workers. The huge financial drain then imposed on the profession by malpractice insurance and ill-considered lawsuits constitutes a substantial injustice. Perhaps these costs would have some justification if the lawsuits served to compensate the victims of malpractice and to weed out the few bad apples among the medical profession. But they do not. One study says very few patients who file claims recover anything, and even successful claims take five years - longer if they go to trial. A large share of the lawsuits have no connection to actual malpractice. Many medical malpractice lawsuits are initiated not because of negligent medical care, but because a baby was born with a tragically debilitating condition despite proper medical care. But the injury presents a story that a skilled trial lawyer can use to sway a jury's sympathy against the supposedly rich and uncaring physician. For
instance, among the lawsuit victories were cases brought against doctors and hospitals for babies born with cerebral palsy. Independent, peer-reviewed research shows that nearly all cerebral palsy cases have nothing to do with the birth procedure, including many cases that have resulted in huge damage judgments. Many of those opposed to lawsuit reform blame insurance companies for the large premium increases, alleging that the companies want to recoup money from bad investments. This is a myth. In fact, virtually all the insurance industry's investments have been in conservative bond funds, the fluctuations of which are far too modest to account for the vast increase in premiums. By contrast, studies convincingly show that damage judgments - especially for the intangible "pain and suffering" - have been escalating far ahead of any rational factors such as inflation.
Connecticut's physicians face some of the highest medical malpractice premiums in the country. Yet both of Connecticut's U.S. senators voted in
February to block a modest reform that would have capped pain-and-suffering verdicts in obstetric lawsuits at $250,000. This reform would have still allowed plaintiffs to be compensated for all medical care and all lost wages, past and future, caused by any medical malpractice. That such a modest reform cannot get past the trial lawyers' lobby should be
cause for alarm among those who wish to preserve the quality of America's obstetric medicine, and among those who expect fairness in
our civil justice system. Both are at risk as long as the broken malpractice-lawsuit system remains immune to reform. Lawyers created this broken system, and they now bear responsibility for helping to fix it.
Henry Kopel is an assistant U.S. attorney in Connecticut.
The views expressed here are solely his own and do not reflect the
views of the Department of Justice.