The Battle Royal

Being waged by three Goliaths and one David is the ongoing clash over Medical Malpractice. The Goliaths on the battlefield are the American Medical Association (AMA), the Medical Malpractice Insurers, Medical Malpractice lawyers, and then there stands David and sometimes all David wants is an apology from the medical professional who was responsible for causing his injury. Case in point is a new Virginia (VA) law that allows doctors and hospitals to apologize to the people they hurt by medical errors. The premise behind it is that .if someone had simply been honest and outwardly caring, many times the patient would not contact a personal injury lawyer at all and that's because patients are more upset by how they were treated, than what has happened to them from the standpoint of the medical result.

Interestingly, the medical malpractice insurance lobby pushed this law to passage. See, not everything lobbyists come up with is bad. Does it really matter if the only reason they did it was to earn the huge fees paid to them by their masters? If the results are good then why should anybody care why they did it? Unfortunately, the results are not always so good. A case in point is California that adopted the purposed tort reform caps with abysmal results. There has only been one true beneficiary of California's "tort reform" law and that's California insurers who have profited wildly from it. Now, not to pick on insurance companies as they are mandated to maximize profits for the stockholders, but why do doctors, who see little if any benefit in their liability insurance premiums, continue to wittingly or not, do the insurers' political dirty work for them? If that's not a question that begs for an answer I don't know what is, unfortunately though I can't answer it unless the answer is one of simple 'hubris'. In which case the latest push to exclude jurists and regular run-of-the-mill judges from medical malpractice cases would make a great deal of sense.

Ok, then, let's stick with 'hubris', as we consider that there is presently legislation pending before congress to set up pilot programs which would divert all medical malpractice cases to special courts where they would be judged by "medical experts" chosen by the hospital in which the alleged malpractice occurred. And should it be that a patient or, in a wrongful death, a family member is dissatisfied with the result, well, they then have the option to have their case heard in another special court presided over by a "medical expert" judge. In effect, never again would a doctor have to answer to anyone that was not a medical 'expert'.

In which case let's take a further look at 'experts' who preside over making medical decisions for us non-expert types:

After 27,000 strokes and heart attacks that, according to the FDA, were tied to the use of Celbrex, Vioxx, and Bextra, 32 'pharmaceutical experts' gathered to discuss the problem. Not to say that the intentions of these drugs were not good as they were supposed to provide pain relief to arthritis sufferers without the side effect of an upset stomach. To that end the drugs succeeded, however the unexpected and dramatic spate of strokes and heart attacks among the drugs users was problematic.

Just as an aside and in case you're curious, of the 32 'pharmaceutical experts' 27 of them had direct financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Of course, no one least of all me, would accuse them of bias, however their solution to the problem of strokes and heart attacks seems somewhat questionable. But who am I to question these experts in deciding that the perfect solution was not to take the drugs of the market but to put more warning on the label.

Now, just in case you are trending towards the idea that 'medical experts' called in to settle medical malpractice cases as the AMA and Medical Insurance Companies are asking for, would not be such a bad idea, you might want to rethink your position. Unless, of course, you happen to be a Goliath and not a David.