--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood@panix.com> wrote:

You forgot to quote the part where I said that the right-wing 
anecdote machine thrives on pretending that extraordinary things are 
actually quite ordinary, when they're not. In this instance, your 
view of litigation driving medical practice is way overblown.

Where the right stands on this is irrelevant. Neither of us knows 
the extent to which this happens. But when professionals are made 
accountable to external bodies without specific expertise, it will 
do no good. If doctors are as bad as you say, the answer is not to 
call in the lawyers to do the regulating.

Inevitably some doctors will perform below the average. Not all 
doctors are as good as we would like. But that's not a cause for 
resort to law. Unfortunately, we won't all be operated on by the 
best surgeon. Some of us will have to be operated on by a first 
time surgeon. But I'm afraid that this is just bad luck. There's 
an interesting parallel here with the distribution of performance 
of fund managers, which is close to what one would expect from a 
random distribution. 

Meanwhile, the US medical sector offers probably the worst value 
for money in the whole world. Socialised medicine is not the 
most difficult argument for the left by a long shot. So why are 
you all retreating behind tactical support for a litigeous 
culture that probably harms health care? (Even if neither Doug nor 
me can quantify the extent of that harm.)

James
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