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Texas Tort Reform Math: Your life + my mistake = your problem.

By Steve Lombardi

I was thinking maybe I should leave the Great State of Texas alone for awhile and allow them time to learn from their mistakes. But I can't do that. I take the lawyering job too seriously to just let it go.

It seems wrong for professionals that make hundreds of thousands of dollars of income each and every year to ask patients who earn minimum wage to take financial responsibility for their professional mistakes.

That's exactly what doctors have done with what they call Texas tort reform.

TRUST ME, IT'S THE NUMBER OF MALPRACTICE CLAIMS FILED BY GREEDY PLAINTIFFS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sotyIECe_hw

Okay Texas patients you'd better listen up. Yes, you, I'm talking to you. Are you listening? This is a huge concept so please listen up.

PROBLEM NUMERO UNO: The patient will be forced to guess at what risks they may experience with the doctors, the surgical team, the hospital staff, the drugs they are given, with what you are injected and the equipment they use on you.

It is that risk that may cost you in the end.

Here are the facts: Hospitals and the medical environments expose the patient to all sorts of risks. People problems, germs, infections, product defects, substance abuse, under trained and over worked staff along with what you may contract, or equipment that may malfunction and injure you. All these things you have no control over and there are dozens of people making important decisions on too little sleep and too few hours in their day. None are really paying enough attention to every detail. All that goes on around you the patient and if there is a mistake made, you get to pay for the costs. They take away your quality of life and no one wants to take financial responsibility. Meanwhile their life goes on like nothing ever happened.

Tort Reform Math 101

The math works something like this: One mistake + your life = your problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D_lfsc-BF0

Tort Reformers' Math 401-K Plan

We make the mistake + we get paid - the cost of your suffering = how to retire early.

THE MEDICAL MATH PROBLEMS - REAL LIFE EXERCISES

The Boston Globe recently reported on a case involving Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and how difficult it is for hospital personnel to report impaired doctors.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center doctor gave poor care to a patient and that the hospital didn't do an adequate job of training personnel to report impaired doctors, according to the Boston Globe.

Though the doctor's behavior was questioned by an operating-room nurse in the morning and he had a history of drug and alcohol use, the doctor continued with a patient procedure until the afternoon. That patient suffered complications from liposuction that lasted seven hours instead of the 90 minutes he was told it would take. The doctor left the operating room without finishing the procedure; he eventually was fired and lost his medical license.

The state's latest report was far more critical of the hospital than an initial finding completed by the public-health department in September, according to the Boston Herald in an article Tuesday.

….

The case raises questions about how hard it is for others in the operating room — nurses, techs and doctors in training — to challenge the competency of surgeons, according to the Globe.

Last year, Beth Israel Deaconess disclosed that a surgeon had done a procedure on the wrong side of a patient after the operating team had failed to follow protocol. Read more here.

The more I learn about how tort reform is being used to persuade voters about the run-a-way costs of health care, the more I'm reminded of The Shell Game.

TRUST ME, IF YOU PASS THE COSTS OF OUR MISTAKES ON TO THE PATIENTS MEDICAL INSURANCE COSTS WILL COME DOWN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZQ3BMukysg

TRUST ME, I'LL TAKE CARE OF YOU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b5oV_H65Es

TRUST ME IT'S THE LAWYER'S FAULT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7-EbV2eP7A

TRUST ME, I CAN DO THIS WITH YOUR TAX DOLLARS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN0I-TZFn58

If costs of medical care will come down then those advancing medical tort reform should be able to prove it. If they can't then there should be nothing to talk about. PERIOD.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on May 07, 2009 (boomark / email).