Doc Quits! $160,000 Per Year Malpractice Costs the Cause
Posted on October 27, 2009
-By Warner Todd Huston
Doctor Jacquelline Perlman has had it. After a 12-year career as an OB-GYN doctor she his quitting her practice. One of the major reasons is the exorbitant costs of malpractice insurance.
“I’ve decided to retire from obstetrics,” said Perlman, 42. “It breaks my heart. Malpractice costs are a big part of it. It’s a very sad story.”
Last spring her insurer dropped her and several of her fellow doctors because of the high risk of covering OB-GYNs. Dr. Perlman’s new insurer was to charge $160,000 a year for coverage and that proved too much for Perlman to take.
Perlman noted that over the last five years, as her insurance costs multiplied, her actual income dropped by 20 percent.
So, another good doctor — one that has never had a malpractice case stick to her — leaves the profession. Now, before some of you out there assume the insurance companies is the villain here, let us pinpoint the real villain: trial lawyers.
It is the nuisance lawsuits, those filed merely to harass doctors in order to get a quick settlement, and lawyers that game the system with nonsense lawsuits as well as clients looking for a lottery-like payout that will make them instant millionaires that cause this problem.
One of the most important aspects of what should be a true reform to our system of medicine would be a policy that would curtail these out-of-control, greedy lawyers. Naturally, tort reform and trial lawyers are coming up as a protected class in Obamacare. And why is that? Because trial lawyers gave Obama a ton of cash for his campaign, that’s why.
This proves that Obamacare is not about “reform,” nor about improving our medical system. It is first and foremost about political payoffs. Obama is shameless in his political payoffs and this one is particularly stark.
In the meantime, as Obamacare takes its baby steps toward final passage, more great docs like Mrs. Perlman will quit the business.
Obama keeps pretending that we will be “allowed” to “keep our doctors if we like them.” But as each day passes we are finding more and more reasons why many of us will lose our favorite doctors whether we like them or not.
» Filed Under Anti-Capitalism, Attorney malpractice/ethics, Barack Obama, Delusional Dupes and DUmmies, Democrats, Economy, Government, Government corruption, Healthcare, House, Liberal World, Medical Malpractice/ethics, Moral Relativism, News, President, Senate, liberalism, tort reform
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2 Responses to “Doc Quits! $160,000 Per Year Malpractice Costs the Cause”
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To start with this looks more like a coverage issue. There need to be a look into why the rate is so high and how it compares to past rates. If she had no claims even settled, why did the rate go up? New York is going through rate issues, that are as much caused by investment profit loses and executive salaries as anything else.
Minnesota has a system with low number of claims, good rates and no caps. We can talk about that any time.
The problem with malpractice costs is malpractice itself. Rather than making it difficult, if not impossible, for injured (or killed) people to be compensated, we need to stop malpractice in the first place.
National Practitioner Data Bank data shows that in most states only about two percent of physicians have been responsible for over half of all the money paid out for malpractice since 1990. NPDB data also shows that quite often these two percent have multiple payments in their records but no action by state licensing boards to revoke their licenses or restrict their practices. Similarly, most often no action has been taken by hospital peer reviewers to revoke or restrict their clinical privileges. So the “repeat offenders” continue commit more malpractice.
Dr. Perlman ought to rechannel her frustration into an effort to get the licensing boards and peer reviewers to get serious about protecting the public from physicians with a pattern of malpractice.
It is also worth noting that there are fewer than 20,000 malpractice payments each year for all causes although the Institute of Medicine estimates that there are about 100,000 deaths each year from malpractice. Other sources double that number. Only about 28 percent of malpractice payments involve patient death. Thus we can estimate that at most only about 3 to 6 percent of all malpractice victims receive any malpractice payment.
The real problem isn’t malpractice payments. To save money and reduce malpractice insurance premiums — and more importantly, to save lives and prevent injury — we need true malpractice reform that reduces malpractice itself. We need to stop treating the symptoms — malpractice payments — and instead treat the disease — malpractice.