Comments on: Malpractice http://www.medrants.com/archives/2106 Internal medicine, American health care, and especially medical education Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:15:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: jb http://www.medrants.com/archives/2106/comment-page-1#comment-4746 jb Mon, 11 Oct 2004 01:49:54 +0000 http://medrants.com/archives/2004/09/30/malpractice/#comment-4746 Aaron- A good starting point would be a multiple of what the patient prospectively thought his or her life was worth, as demonstrated by how much insurance he or she was willing to buy. Most people have minimal or no insurance, and therefore it is safe to assume that he didn't think his life was worth much. It seems that life is of nearly infinite value only if someone else is paying the tab. So, the most I would award for wrongful death is to match whatever the person thought his life was worth as the amount of life insurance he bought and paid for. For a lifetime of pain or disability, I would award some multiple of that, 2 or 3 times. If you wanted to be bleeding heart about it, you could give everyone an automatic $50K or so as a minimum, but then I would also want a ceiling of a million or so for the total award. Aaron-
A good starting point would be a multiple of what the patient prospectively thought his or her life was worth, as demonstrated by how much insurance he or she was willing to buy. Most people have minimal or no insurance, and therefore it is safe to assume that he didn’t think his life was worth much. It seems that life is of nearly infinite value only if someone else is paying the tab.
So, the most I would award for wrongful death is to match whatever the person thought his life was worth as the amount of life insurance he bought and paid for. For a lifetime of pain or disability, I would award some multiple of that, 2 or 3 times. If you wanted to be bleeding heart about it, you could give everyone an automatic $50K or so as a minimum, but then I would also want a ceiling of a million or so for the total award.

]]> By: arf http://www.medrants.com/archives/2106/comment-page-1#comment-4722 arf Sat, 02 Oct 2004 21:40:51 +0000 http://medrants.com/archives/2004/09/30/malpractice/#comment-4722 At our local medical school, that would be $500,000 *total* damages, as the state carves out an exemption for itself. Only private doctors are subject to unlimited damages. At our local medical school, that would be $500,000 *total* damages, as the state carves out an exemption for itself.

Only private doctors are subject to unlimited damages.

]]> By: Aaron http://www.medrants.com/archives/2106/comment-page-1#comment-4720 Aaron Sat, 02 Oct 2004 15:06:15 +0000 http://medrants.com/archives/2004/09/30/malpractice/#comment-4720 Perhaps you can make your next post a proposed table of damages - what you would deem to be reasonable compensation for "pain and suffering" for various forms of injury - in accord with your claim that such a table would make the tort system more fair. Perhaps you can make your next post a proposed table of damages – what you would deem to be reasonable compensation for “pain and suffering” for various forms of injury – in accord with your claim that such a table would make the tort system more fair.

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