Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Bush prods Congress on medical liability limits (Reuters)
MINNETONKA, Minnesota (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Tuesday renewed his call for Congress to curb medical malpractice lawsuits and signed an executive order aimed at providing Americans more information about the cost and quality of health care services.
Medical Malpractice; Doctors Asleep at the Wheel
There are many medical malpractice lawsuits some are reality based many are not. Now we have lawyers ruining the industry because many doctors see each new patient in an adversarial way because they are a potential lawsuit.
Why Are Medical Malpractice Cases Hard To Prove?
Medical malpractice lawsuits are attacked by doctors and major insurance companies, but the laws that permit these suits are critical to assuring that the delivery of medical care in the U.S. is improved. Simply stated: without the risk of economic penalty for poor care, U.S. medical services would be far worse today. In fact, recent studies have shown that medical malpractice claims have NOT been a significant cause of physician liability insurance premium increases, but instead the medical insurance companies increased premiums to cover investment losses without a direct relationship to paying out more valid claims! "Tort" claims for misdiagnosis of medical conditions, for failure to diagnose, for improper surgical procedures all are a sure way to force the field of medicine to monitor itself and improve care.
The Effects of Political Action Committee Contributions on Medical Liability Legislation
This paper examines representatives' voting on the HEALTH Act of 2003, which proposed a limit on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits. The estimates show that the more campaign contributions a representative received from law firm PACs, the less likely he or she was to vote for the bill, while money from insurance and health care industry PACs increased the likelihood of an aye vote. These effects remain after controlling for the endogeneity of campaign contributions. Other factors affecting voting decisions include party affiliation, representative ideology, whether or not the representative was an attorney, the change in state malpractice premiums and payouts, and the change in the number of doctors in the state. There is no strong evidence that the AMA's strategy of naming certain states as being in "crisis" increased the probability that representatives from those states supported the bill.

Medical Malpractice and Legal Information Resources