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Originally Posted by creekster
No, this was deep into the conversation and we had already reached agreement on many key points. He actually said it to make the point that he acknowledged that there were many meritorious claims that deserved compensation in some form. Like I said, the thing that bothered him was the widely disparate results.
I do think that juries can vary pretty dramatically in terms of their willingness to award damages (that is you, folks, not the lawyers) and this affects pretty dramatically how willing lawyers are to take marginal cases. So his point is a good one, I think.
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So who sets up the rules? I know doctors have been clamoring for years that malpractice cases need to go before specialized juries, in the same way that patent law and other similar "expertise" issues do, only to run into opposition from...you guessed it...the American Bar Association.
My second complaint about malpractice involves the "profitable" suit. In other words, a bad result with a 40-yr old man with four kids will be snatched up by about any attorney regardless of what happened with the medical care because the potential reward is so high, and it will likely be settled out of court. This kind of thing could be controlled by expert preselection committees-groups of experts chosen to evaluate the merits of cases--this again has been strongly opposed by the American Bar Association.
And then there is the standard used. I truly believe the vast majority of doctors are doing the best they know how to do. But even the best makes a mistake. If I pay for a service and the provider of that service makes a mistake, that's an expected part of a human system. Grossly negligent mistake? Different story. Why isn't gross negligence the universal standard for malpractice? Are there other industries that are held to this strict of standard? (This is an honest question--I admittedly don't understand the law.)
Fix these three problems and medical costs will plummet. You have no idea how much CYA medicine costs.