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Miss. made a plan, will nation follow?
Published Sunday, November 8, 2009
Once upon a time, Mississippi was a trial lawyer’s dream. Limitless caps on pain and suffering damages and plenty of juries eager to “set things right.”
Unfortunately, what they “righted” cost the state dearly. As juries awarded ever-increasing penalties, the luxury cars of the out-of-town attorneys kept speeding into the Magnolia state.
In legal circles — or at least the personal injury legal circles — Mississippi was in high cotton, ready to be picked. All a slick attorney had to do was find some way to get their case into a Mississippi courtroom and millions, even billions in settlements were almost a given.
Physicians and pharmaceutical companies were easy targets.
And just to our north, in Jefferson County some of the biggest cases in the country came home to roost.
As legal abuse increased medical malpractice insurance skyrocketed — driving away some good physicians, who simply couldn’t afford to do business in Mississippi.
Fortunately a small group of physicians decided that enough was enough and began leading a statewide charge for legal reforms to limit the abuses that were causing the problems. That small group had Natchez roots.
In 2004, the work that began here led to sweeping reforms of the state’s tort laws. To those local physicians who lobbied hard to change the state’s legal reputation, we’re forever grateful.
We hope the national health care debate will look to some of Mississippi’s reforms as models for what should become a nationwide effort.
Perhaps the nation can learn from Mississippi’s mistakes — and how we fixed them.
Comments
Posted by 000117 (anonymous) on November 9, 2009 at 11:28 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Maybe they will also stop killing patients by their mistakes. I know of 4 in the NRH and one family only received $ 250,000.00 for the death of their mother. The Doctors left cotton balls in side of the her that gave her an infection, that killed her.
One family was told by an ER doctor that the reason their father died is because of NEGLIGENT on the part of the Hospital staff. But--NO-- the insurance is too high for them.
I say you have to pay the cost, to be the boss.
Posted by Yeahuhuh (anonymous) on November 9, 2009 at 1:08 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Well as wonderful as tort reform is, I really thing that a lot more people are getting the short end of the stick than are getting filthy rich. Except doctors and lawyers. They still seem to manage to do okay.
The doctors evidently had enough sway to convince the legislature that despite the fact that everyone is paying ridiculous health care costs, if they did not get their way the doctors were going to leave the state.
So the people lost a portion of their right to sue.
Now in Washington Congress is working on the other side of the equation -- the insurance companies and what they can and cannot get away with.
Posted by bombingeight (anonymous) on November 10, 2009 at 7:46 a.m. (Suggest removal)
One comment and one question -
If Mississippi was known as a haven for malpractice lawsuits, perhaps the nation does not have the problem to the degree MS did. The solution of MS is not required for the nation.
Question- After "solving" this problem, MS should have seen a reduction in the rate of growth of health care expenditures. Did that happen, and if not, why?
Posted by Yeahuhuh (anonymous) on November 10, 2009 at 8:32 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Yeah. The tort reform issue would remove one cause of high malpractice insurance, but did that translate to lower health care costs? Or did that even translate into lower malpractice insurance costs?
Here is my guess. Yes there would be a marginal lowering of insurance for doctors. No, for a variety of reasons there would be no rate decreases from doctors to patients.
It occurs to me that of all occupations, doctors benefit from very high rates of return due to government systems, licensing, laws and regulations. If anybody IS the system, their occupation is that.
When doctors plea for more protections and it comes at the expense of patients' rights, is that actually a free market solution or is that simply getting government to write them another protection at the expense of the general public?
I think that is bigger government designed to help a small percentage of the population at the expense of the general public.
Of course the dynamic of proving innocence in court can be tricky, especially when cases go to laymen juries. But don't we all face that dynamic with prosecution in general?
It is my impression that the reaction of juries to claims of malpractice in today's climate of increasing medical costs is the check and balance to wildly increasing medical costs. To seek to avoid that factor is the exact opposite of faith in the marketplace.
Of course lying lawyers are a hard foe to beat and maybe it does take some special action. Why not limit the lawyer's fees in such cases and take the gold out of the mine? Then the lawyers could avoid the lower paying cases and the patient would just suffer with no recourse that way, too!
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