Submitted by Charles N. Rock, Aug 7, 2007 14:35

Medical Malpractice rates are rising because of insurance company losses in their investments. Medical malpractice suits have declined precipitously not because there is any less malpractice, that's on the rise, but because the insurance industry spends millions of dollars each year to convince potential jurors that if they give fair and just compensation (which they call "excessive") that doctors will leave the area and there will be no one to deliver their babies. This is pure nonsense. The insurance industry spends huge amounts of money to defeat meritorious cases in which people and families have suffered devastating losses. The industry knows that the billions it has spent over the years is paying off and juries are loathe to give a malpractice victim their fair compensation. Doctors who in the past have been willing to objectively review cases for plaintiffs and defendants now find that they will lose their hospital privileges if they do any work or testify on behalf of a malpractice victim, jury tampering on a national level. Attorney's fees for malpractice are the lowest of any type of personal injury case while the cases are the hardest and most expensive to prosecute. The industry knows that if they dramatically raise the premiums for doctors and hospitals then the doctors will scream about how malpractice rates are crushing them, so they blame the victim, again and again and again. This is why there are less malpractice cases being prosecuted. The best way to lower malpractice rates is 1) do no harm; when you surgically extract a healthy lung and leave behind the diseased one, don't go alter the records so that your insurance company can spend hundreds of thousands to defend your frivolous defense, give fair and just compensation to that victim and that would save the industry each and every time; 2) make the insurance company show their CEO's compensation packages and show their defense register and their indemnification register. We know that there are upward of 98,000 people who die each year from preventable medical mistakes, and just think how much that costs society; there are hundreds of thousands injured each year from medication errors, and just think how much that costs society. It is time to stop blaming the victims and it is time to address the real cause; bad systems in medicine that allow for catastrophic harm to occur; greed beyond all measure within the insurance industry.

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