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This story caught my eye, mainly because both Kevin MD and The Medical Quack linked to it, but came to really different conclusions about what to take away from it. You can visit their sites to see what they quote.
I tend to agree with Kevin on these issues. But, looking at the pair of excerpts they posted, I thought this paragraph in the story deserved some attention as well:
It’s been harder to tally the law’s costs. Critics say it is increasingly preventing victims and their families from getting their day in court, especially low-income workers, children and the elderly. Their reasoning: The cap on pain and suffering has never been raised nor tied to inflation.
Since the cap was set in 1975, maybe it would be good to get it set to inflation. I don’t want to see medical costs go up or doctor shortages. But at the same time, if the public gets convinced that people have no recourse to the law, we could eventually see the caps get removed altogether. Better to find middle ground.
What do you think?
This story about an Oregon state supreme court ruling caught my eye: “Government liability cap is overruled.”
The justices ruled that parts of a state law limiting liability claims against governments violate the constitutional right of an injured person to seek a full remedy in court.
During the court’s consideration of the case, which stemmed from a medical-malpractice lawsuit against Oregon Health & Science University, local governments expressed concern about opening individual employees to claims and removing liability limits on governments.
“I think the decision will increase the cost of settlements in claims against government, because the ’sideboards’ are gone, at least in large cases,” said Paul Snider, the legal counsel for the Association of Oregon Counties.
“It would be safe to say it will likely result in increased costs of delivering government services — and ultimately those costs will be picked up by taxpayers.”
The justices left intact part of the law that requires governments to insure all employees against liability claims. [read the rest]
It is hard for me to be too upset by this. If it is allowable to sue other doctors for huge amounts, then how could it be just for a government doctor to be treated any differently? It seems to me that by allowing no cap on lawsuit awards, including awards for “noneconomic” harm, the government was saying that government employees should not be accountable to the same justice as other people. If one wants to set caps, one should do so, it seems to me, for all the people in the state. How else can we honor equality before the law?
(Also, typical tort reform involves only a limit on “pain and suffering” penalties. The point is not to prevent recompense for actual damages, but to limit the kind of awards that are not measurable by objective criteria. As far as I can tell from the story, the caps on medical malpractice awards limited all possible jury awards, even when the plaintiff needed care as a result of the malpractice that far exceeded what the cap allowed.)
I’d be really interested in what readers think of all this–if any can tear themselves away from the seasonal celebration long enough to comment!
