Oh, so now our lack of national health is my fault because I wrote a few posts about med mal caps and tort reform? Or beacuse of all those thoudsands of activists mistakenly organizing aainst tort reform when they could be winning smashing victories for national health, like we did under the Clintons? Oops. I forgot. We didn't win any such battles under the Clintons. My bad, I should not have even been thinking about tort reform.
>
> When we speak of malpractice, it doesn't generally
> refer to
> doctors butchering patients because they're drunk,
> but to
> honest professionals making mistakes.
Sigh, And you are a legal expert because? Making an honest mistake is a _defense_ to a med mal charge. Liability for malpractice requires proof to a predonderance of evidence of lack of the exercise of due care expected of a professional with ordinary expertise by local standards. So if you exercise due care but are wrong, you're not liable. You might get sued anyway and the insurance company might settle, but that won't result in a big award.
And when they
> are
> disporportionately punished for making mistakes, it
> encourages a timid conservatism that isn't
> necessarily best
> for patient care.
As opposed to the reckless indifference and wild experimentationw e might encourage by preventing meaningful damage awards? I have no idea what you are saying. What evidence do you have that lawsuits are driving a timid medical conservatism that is bad for patients -- as opposed to HM0 cost-cutters without medical training making medical decisions from which, according to the US S.Ct, they are now pretty much immune from suit if the insurance comes with a benefit plan? This is a pretty good test cast for your theory because those guys _cannot be sued_ -- the cases are preempted under ERISA. But the immunity to suit aint any help there either.
>
> Justin:
> "Btw, in case it wasn't quite clear, I have no
> material
> interest in opposing tort reform."
>
> It wouldn't matter if you did. Tort lawyers are not
> wrong
> because they have material interests. I am
> uncomfortable with
> the way people try to disavow interest in political
> debate.
> Self-serving ideas are sometimes in the public good,
> and
> disinterested promotion of ideas can be terrible for
> the
> majority. We can only sort them out by debating the
> relative
> merits of the ideas, not the relatively
> disinterested moral
> worth of those propounding them.
>
James, I agree with you about the inevitability and legitimacy of having an interest in what you say. I thought you were saying, Oh, don't listen to Justin, he's just a lawyer, of course he'd oppose tort reform. I was noting that I'm the kind of lawyer who, if I weren't a whatever I am that participates on this list, would support tort reform. So I'm glad you were not saying that. We are of one mind on this.
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