juddson said:
How do poor patients who have been injured wrongfully sue their doctor in court? That's quite a decision, no? Win or go to jail. I'm guessing only the wealthy have a legally cognizable and enforceable interest in demanding that their care providers exercise due care.
Judd
And yet-- amazingly-- their society does not crumble, and we don't hear horror stories of the indigent being victims of malpractice deprived of all recourse. I don't know how they do it, those wily foreigners!
🙄 😛
Wretched attempt at sarcasm aside, I would think that the previously mentioned "College of Doctors" would serve to filter out illegitimate claims, thus avoiding such potentially troubling scenarios as you allude to. In other words, a valid case from a poor plaintiff which goes to trial has a much better chance of being won, having been judged as legitimate by experts in the field.
I see what you're saying, but I still insist that something like that could work, and should be instituted posthaste. If deemed necessary (and it might be, as you raise valid concerns), it could be amended somewhat to account for these realities-- say, by instituting a sliding pay scale should the plaintiff be unable to pay after having been found to have brought a frivolous suit. That is, if a person makes $30K, and the expenses incurred by the doctor or hospital while defending the case were in the amount of $60K, then a cap would be set at 15-20% of the plaintiff's income per year until the sum had been paid (these are arbitrary numbers which would obviously be set only after much debate). But it strikes me as reasonably fair.
Obviously, those with higher incomes would be able to pay a higher % as well, not just a higher absolute amount per year. So if a person earns $75K/year, they would be subject to a penalty of 30-35%, for instance.
I like the gist of the policy, but I see no reason to throw people in jail if they don't have the means to pay (it strikes me as excessive, in the same way that our current medmal system does). Just take a small % for more years, which would still allow that person to not starve.
Sensible reform must be made, and this would be one step in that direction. I wonder if the country he speaks of just doesn't have any poor people, if they don't have any advocacy groups for the indigent, or if they just don't have as many lawyers as we do here in the US. I'd wager it's the latter.
😛 After all, though your concerns would appear to be well-founded, one would think that advocacy groups would be up in arms over such a system, yet I would imagine that this is not the case; this suggests to me that these concerns are dealt with through other avenues-- unless you're making the ludicrous claim that only the US cares about its poor and underprivileged.
The only other argument one could make is that such a system keeps poorer folk from even bringing suit due to the potentially ruinous economic consequences. Though, like I said, I feel that many of those concerns would be allayed by the aforementioned College of Doctors (which should have legal experts on it as well in addition to physicians), as the only claims which ever got to court in the first place would have been deemed to be meritorious by experts.
But who knows; hopefully romed81 can further clarify how his country's system works in such instances (as well as telling us which country it is).
I also find it amusing to even entertain the notion that most lawyers care in the slightest about the underprivileged. For $500/hour, which is the going rate for most top defense and corporate attorneys, it wouldn't seem so. If these medmal lawyers didn't work on contingency fees, but instead on flat rates or hourly rates, we'd see just how far their purported altruism and nobility goes. I'd say that the most preferable system would be a costs + flat-rate system-- at least then, lawyers would actually command a modicum of respectability. So they'd recoup their costs while still commanding a tidy sum for themselves; this would also reign in the tendency to seek these astronomical verdicts, which are nonsense anyway. Lawyers are quick to say that you "cannot quantify the loss of a limb, or paralysis". And, if it can indeed be shown to be due to gross negligence or
reasonably foreseeable error, I do not deny that such persons should be entitled to HUGE sums, on the order of multiple millions of dollars. A victim of avoidable paralysis should receive about $5-10M in my opinion (and more if it's ever necessary due to the resultant medical expenses). A McDonald's coffee burn victim with first-degree burns on a normally covered part of her body should not get $3M in any universe.
It's always amusing when lawyers play the "moral high ground" card. What they fail to realize is that, for them, there is no high ground-- they're standing smack-dab in the middle of the terrestrial equivalent of the Marianis Trench. They supposedly care about the poor being able to bring suit, yet show no compunction when bilking them out of 40% of their award. Yeah, they
really care about the rights of the underprivileged.
🙄 Just another example of the sort of sophistry that all too many folks can't see through even with bifocals.
When things start affecting the lawyers' bottom line, then you'll see where their true motives lie, though they'll always spin it in the most positive way so as to not come off as the greedy slime many of them are. And, undoubtedly, some will say that doctors are also complaining because it's hurting their bottom-line, and this is true; the difference is that I know of no doctor making $2M/year, while there are probably several dozen attorneys just in NYC making that much and getting fat off of the status quo. A doctor of any sort should not be making $90K-- it's philosophically indefensible (unless you're a radical socialist, but then lawyers would have to make $90K too
😛). But to assert that lawyers' income should take a hit from $1M+ to a more reasonable figure like $3-400K is much more defensible imo.
The thing that gets me the most is that people fail to realize that sophistry is
part of an attorney's job; they'll necessarily be better at it than you are, and they WILL be able to use that silver tongue of theirs to make even the most grossly disproportionate punitive measures seem palatable. Don't be conned. I've learned in my life that people can intellectually justify anything; those that are eloquent and intelligent, all the more so. We have people who write legitimate philosophical essays in this country defending bestiality, or the murder of newborn babies (see: Singer, of Harvard); when you read such things, they can actually almost convince one to lend them their support-- they're
that powerful and persuasive, if not cogent. Doesn't make it right.
And neither are lawyers right in their desire to maintain the status quo and even further expand their diabolical little empire (the US). As a culture, it's about time we put our foot down; unfortunately, it's not going to happen, as the same trends in government (PAC's, soft money etc.) which have usurped our power and prestige as voters and tax-paying citizens also serve to further consolidate the influence of attorneys. They have this nation by the balls, sadly. So do the corporations. Ridding ourselves of the excesses of both will, I believe, be the great struggle of our generation-- at least if we as a nation ever wish to regain a shred of credibility and sanity.
Anyway, enough of my ranting...
😛 😳
