Lawyers

Reality According to Lawyers.

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ May 17, 2002 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Leo V. Boyle president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America writes for Knight Ridder Tribune that absolutely everything else including the insurance companies, the economy, California legislation, pixie dust, and the alignment of the moons is to blame for the massive cost of malpractice insurance. He then goes on to imply that the nation’s health system is directly responsible for 98,000 patient deaths per year caused by “preventable medical errors” (from a flawed study) - as if hospitals are loaded with morons absentmindedly filling syringes with cyanide instead of happy juice. But this is only a set up for the biggest whopper yet. Leo thinks that malpractice lawyer’s ability to defend the injured innocent is directly tied to how much they can win in a suit. Leo calls setting limits on malpractice jury awards (as California did in 1975), “limiting justice”.

What rhetorical crap. Can’t Leo see the effects on the health care system that he and his friends in the ATLA are having? Doctors don’t want to limit their patient’s right to compensation for injury. Doctors want to limit the perverse effects that a few obscene, overly zealous, and usually limitless judgments have had on health care and their ability to manage patients. Medpundent has a great point for point rebuttle about this article so I won’t reproduce it here. I would say however, that the funny part is that Leo’s article is almost a mirror copy ATLA’s own website that lists their positions to these exact same issues! Well, who ever said that lawyers were creative or free thinkers?