Dig Deeper Texas

I know I should just ignore him but…

MySA.com: Roddy Stinson

Lawsuit-happy personal injury lawyers are largely responsible for the burdensome cost of malpractice insurance.

Never mind the facts.

Malpractice Situation Not Dire, Study Finds (washingtonpost.com)

In his pitch for legislation imposing a “hard cap of $250,000″ on medical malpractice awards for non-economic damages, President Bush points the finger at what he calls “a broken medical liability system.” But a new analysis of malpractice claims filed over 15 years in his home state of Texas found no such crisis there. “

We find no evidence of the medical malpractice crisis that produced headlines over the last several years and led to legal reform in Texas and other states,” a group of four legal scholars concluded in a report being released today.

“What we found is a sea of calm” in Texas malpractice claim cases from 1988 to 2002, said co-author David A. Hyman, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Illinois. “So, at least in Texas, the tort system can’t be the cause of spikes in malpractice premiums.”

Malpractice Situation Not Dire, Study Finds (washingtonpost.com)

Malpractice insurance premiums in Texas rose an average of 135 percent from 1999 to 2002, prompting the state legislature to cap non-economic damages in 2003.

Analyzing claims data from 1988 to 2002, the team found little change in the number of claims filed or the total amount paid in damages, when adjusted for population growth and inflation. The total number of claims per physician actually declined from 1995 to 2002, and 80 percent of cases were resolved without payment by the physicians or hospital.

When adjusted for Texas’s economic growth, “total payouts fell by $6 million annually,” the analysis found. The $515 million in malpractice payouts in 2002 represented 0.6 percent of health care spending in Texas that year.

Never mind that people get hurt and no one is held accountable (surely Stinson isn’t counting on the government to punish physicians?)

 

Texas tort reform gets mixed reviews OB/GYN News - Find Articles

Using caps to compensate patients who have been harmed is not a fair approach, said Dr. Frankel. “The trouble with caps is, we do have nightmares. One woman had a bilateral mastectomy, and she had benign disease; she got $100,000. If this had happened to my wife, a trillion dollars would not be enough.”

I really don’t want to wish ill tidings on anyone but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if Stinson might change his tune if someone in his family suffered from medical malpractice. Would he be able to afford the lawyer to take the physician to court or would he be satisfied with whatever punishment is doled out by the Texas Medical Board?

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