On Med-Mal Courts

by rcentor on December 16, 2004

Point of Law clued me in to this link – States Weigh Med-Mal Courts

As debate over “tort reform” continues across the United States, several states are considering the creation of medical malpractice courts to help streamline what many view as costly, complex litigation.

The courts would likely be designed to eliminate juries and allow a judge with medical expertise to decide cases, possibly with the help of court-appointed experts. Proponents assert that medical malpractice courts could be more effective and cost-efficient. Opponents counter that taking juries out of the equation would be unconstitutional.

While a medical malpractice court has yet to be created, the idea is being debated in at least four states — Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania — through legislation, budget maneuvers or proposed pilot programs.

In addition, Common Good, a New York-based nonprofit group advocating legal reform in education and medical malpractice, has been outspoken in its support of it. Franklin Stone, the executive director of Common Good, said that it is currently in talks with 10 states, including New York and Virginia, regarding the creation of special health courts.

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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }

Matt Bishop December 16, 2004 at 3:54 pm

Who would decide damages?

ron December 16, 2004 at 4:03 pm

Dear researcher

Recently I was handed information on two scientists named Mitchnicof and Milicof. These two Russian Research scientists found a cure for tuberculosis in 1912. They noticed that tumors of the disease form a

Wax barrier the immune system cannot penetrate. They found a moth that lays its eggs in beehives. When the larvae hatch they begin to secrete an enzyme that dissolves the beeswax. Once dissolved the bugs then eat it. The two men then extracted this enzyme from the beehive. It was then aerosolled into the lungs of their patients. In six weeks the wax barriers were removed and immune systems got through to cure the disease. The patients were permanently cured. They had a natural immunity to re-infection. This aspect would halt the disease entirely. Once cured you cannot get any form of it again.

I thought this might be an urban legend so I compared modern chemistry to its findings. Baking Soda is produced by our respiratory system. It has two functions: One it balances the PH of our lungs so CO2 mixed with water will not eat up our lungs. CO2 with water forms hydro-carbonic acid. I put coal in a bottle of carbonated water, No affect it will not dissolve it. Then I put coal in baking soda and water, it dissolved. I then put butter in baking soda and warm water; the butter went into solution The enzyme the moths were secreting was a base chemical like baking soda. The cure for tuberculosis is right in front of our eyes. Baking soda solution is a natural chemical present in our lungs. If we aerosol a stronger solution into patients lungs the wax will dissolve and the disease will be cured by their immune systems.

A cure for leprosy is the same thing, but maybe easier, Ammonia is a base chemical. Soaking the affected limbs in a light solution will dissolve the wax barrier. Also a stringent diet of no sugars, breads and low fats will help to remove the barrier from the inside. This gives a new meaning to the Phrase piss on it.

Ammonia is present in urine. So two major diseases can be cured with inexpensive means. Tuberculosis patients should also avoid sugars and heavy fats.

Our conclusion: The story of the two Russian scientists is not an urban legend but may only point to a chemical we can synthesize without moths. If one researcher is not interested it does not matter. We are sending this out to every researcher, hospital and news organization we can. As they say in star track “resistance is futile they will be assimilated.” Just thought everyone might want to jump on this before the truth embarrasses them. If people, whose relatives have died from the present flaws in treatment, see this, then prove it works, It will open doctors to tremendous lawsuits. We will win. They will be out of business in a short time. Baking soda may also help treat allergenic reaction in people who genetically have too little natural soda in their lungs. Lung cancers with wax coatings will also be cured. And it will help to remove tars from smoking from lung tissue. They need to put greed aside and treat patients or they will no longer treat anyone. May God help them to accept the truth. God Bless you and your families. We are only interested in taking down those who serve the root of all evil “The love of money and materialism.” Michael J C Kingdom

This development will help mountain climbers and pilots because baking soda also opens the tissues to be able to absorb and exhale CO2. It will also help asthma and cystic fibrosis if they are caused by a lack of lung soda production. Irritated lung tissue produces more mucus to protect cells during healing. Pneumonia and lungs burned by hot gas will also heal faster if protected by soda inhalation. Doctors are too worried about money if they served their God and their oath
instead of money and high living they would have been given this cure. If I had put down the alchohol sooner my dad would not have died. This paper was handed to me a year before he died from lung problems.

RGL December 17, 2004 at 1:44 pm

An idea whose time has come. Not surprising that the opponents (trial lawyers, who else?)
think that malpractice courts are unconsitutional. They have consistently opposed ideas that would replace the current brutal tort system but would do away with runaway jury awards.

I find it so unseemly for trial lawyers to seek cover in the constitution everytime
they feel their pockets are being picked.

Matt Bishop December 17, 2004 at 2:42 pm

Interesting that you find the right to trial by jury, one of the reasons we fought the revolutionary war for, unseemly.

Bernie Simon December 17, 2004 at 7:47 pm

As I recall, the Constitution grants the right to a jury trial in every lawsuit for an amount over $100. Another factoid I recall is that judges on average award larger settlements than juries. So if the problem is malpractice rates and not the capriciousness of jury awards, med mal courts would not solve your problem and be unconstitutional to boot.

RGL December 17, 2004 at 8:14 pm

Matt and Bernie ought to read a book by respected legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein -PUNITIVE DAMAGES – to learn more about the role of jury awards in medical and other lawsuits. Sunstein and his co-authors found jury awards to be irrational, erratic, and undependable and felt that juries, particularly in malpractice suits, should be replaced. Medical malpractice courts would be much better in assessing the complexities of medicine than lay jurors who have no medical background.

Matt Bishop December 17, 2004 at 9:26 pm

Again, though, you’re talking about assessing whether harm was done, not what the appropriate damages are. Does medical school have a class on estimating damages?

The fact that doctors believe no one but other doctors could possibly understand what they do, and certainly not us simple citizens, illustrates what is wrong with medicine today.

What system would you prefer to a trial by 12 voters, RGL?

RGL December 18, 2004 at 6:50 am

Matt, I’m making a distinction here with medical malpractice lawsuits where much more expertise is needed than in other cases. Appeal to emotions and the use of junk science, as we have seen in cases of cerebral palsy and so-called silicone-induced autoimmune disorders, would not pass muster with medical malpractice panels.

As for the awards, reasonable guidelines can be established beyond the frequently abused practice of reaching into the deep pockets of physicians and their insurance companies.

Clark Venable December 18, 2004 at 7:13 am

Is the article noted near the end, in Pennsylvania, the proposal never made it ‘out of committee.’ Why? A lawyer/legislator from the Philadelphia aread uses his chairmanship of the judicial committee to advance his own agenda for malpractice/tort reform/special medical courts. Meanwhile, more of our best surgeons are packing up and leaving.

Matt Bishop December 18, 2004 at 12:04 pm

RGL,

Why are we giving up constitutional rights because some insurance companies are squeezing doctors?

Matt Bishop December 18, 2004 at 12:06 pm

Clark,

Which doctors have left the area? Most evidence of physicians fleeing jurisdictions has been discounted. And just because an attorney opposes something doesn’t mean its purely self interest. Are there not things you oppose that you have no financial stake in?

RGL December 18, 2004 at 1:06 pm

Matt,

You are using a wrong premise, so that is the wrong question to ask.

Rather, you should be asking: Why do avaricious trial lawyers always object to ideas that would make the law a better instrument to serve the ends of justice for all? Why is it all about money?

Doctors, along with their insurance companies, are reeling from the crushing burdens imposed by a tort system that has benefitted mainly the trial lawyers. Patients ultimately are the victims.

Please face the truth, Matt. Tort reform is on the way, regardless of how you continue to defend the ramparts of a system that are crumbling.

Matt Bishop December 18, 2004 at 4:34 pm

RGL,

I’m using the wrong premise? Actually, the right to a trial by jury is the only premise. Read the Declaration of Independence for an idea of just how important it is.

How many times have you observed a trial, any trial? My guess is none. You have a lot of opinions on a subject you know little about.

Before you get to feeling too bad for insurance companies, you better check their profits over a long period of time, as well as the executive pay at your average company. The fact that you think that insurers are suffering mightily illustrates your ignorance. An ignorance that could be corrected if you’d only listen to the insurers and their lobbyists:

“I don’t like to hear insurance-company executives say it’s the tort system – it’s self inflicted.’”
Donald J. Zuk, Chief Executive of Scpie Holdings Inc., a leading malpractice insurer in California, Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2002.
“As the economy enjoyed a magic carpet ride in the 1990s, insurers kept rates artificially low because they earned
more money investing than by writing policies.”
“The insurance companies wouldn’t be in this position if they hadn’t been so hungry for investment profits and had priced their product appropriately.”
Carol Brierly Golin, editor of Medical Liability Monitor, an industry newsletter in Chicago – Rising Malpractice Premiums Hit Florida Doctors Hardest, Medical Liability Monitor, 12/19/01.

I also think it’s funny that you think it’s all about money for the lawyers, when doctors, on average, make at least twice as much as lawyers. And their insurance costs average less than 10% of their income.

Tort reform, in some form or another, is on the way. And the individual will be the worse off for it. People like you, of course, won’t appreciate what you’ve lost until someone you love suffers at the hands of another.

RGL December 18, 2004 at 10:10 pm

Matt, there is no use continuing this discussion with you if you resort to cheap name-calling. I can call you worse names but I will not descend to that level. Bye!

Dan December 19, 2004 at 7:46 am

RGL – I admire your restraint in not resorting to name-calling – this debate often generates a whole lot of heat withut much actual willingness to consider the merits of the other side. (That “avaricious trial lawyers” must have just slipped out.) Personally, I think that the insurance companies are at the root of the problem, but I acknowledge that the transaction costs of the current system are out of control. I’m interested in learning about more options. Medical Malpractice Courts are an option, though the constitutionality issue is one to be analyzed (it is somewhat absurd, however, that we are contemplating removing medical issues from juries because they are occasionally too complex, but we are happy to let juries sentence poor people to death in cases involving complex ballistics and DNA testimony). Insurance regulation is certainly an option. Ideally, we could start talking about some of these options without leaping to the conclusion that our opponents are intellectually dishonest.

Matt Bishop December 19, 2004 at 10:04 am

RGL,

I didn’t mean it to be name calling. But what other conclusion can one reach when the other side believes that tort reform will lower health care costs? Perhaps I should have called it misguided faith? Like a 30 year old believing in Santa Claus.

Or perhaps you’re just resorting to the name calling cry because you don’t want to admit that you’ve never seen the inside of a courtroom and truthfully have no idea exactly what happens in there?

Or you don’t want to admit that this is the third medical malpractice “crisis” in 30 years, and is even occurring in states that enacted caps last time?

Or you don’t want to admit that the insurers themselves say caps on damages will have minimal, if any effect on premiums?

Or you don’t want to admit that insurers made money hand over fist in the 90s?

Or you don’t want to admit that in exchange for gutting access to the civil justice system, not a single insurer has promised to save a single doctor a dollar in rates?

Dan, what else can one call the other side but intellectually dishonest, when they attempt to use California’s MICRA as proof that caps work yet fail to mention that rates didn’t slow there until Prop 103, insurance reform, was enacted?

If that is not the definition of intellectually dishonest, what is?

Matt Bishop December 19, 2004 at 10:58 am

Incidentally, for you believers in tort reform AND federalism, you crazy libertarians, the Cato Institute has an answer for you:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa514.pdf

Dan December 19, 2004 at 4:39 pm

Matt – I call them uninformed, until someone who actually knows something about California informs them – as you have.

Matt Bishop December 19, 2004 at 4:55 pm

Dan,

If I hadn’t informed him before, I wouldn’t have used the term. But you are right about the heatedness of the debate getting in the way of the facts.

Interestingly, for those who are actually out to prevent “junk” lawsuits, as opposed to merely protect profits, the Kerry-Edwards plan was the one most likely to do so. The fact that it is almost never mentioned illustrates the point that this whole thing is all about profits and has nothing to do with fairness for any side.

Aaron January 6, 2005 at 5:47 pm

The fact that the insurance industry’s present efforts are focused, 100%, on the most meritorious claims with the most significant injuries to malpractice victims, with 0% of the attention paid to “frivolous” lawsuits, makes rather plain that they are not presently concerned with either frivolous litigation or justice for malpractice victims. If doctors thought about that a bit harder, perhaps they would be calling for reforms of the insurance industry – which proved highly effective at reining in malpractice insurance premiums, for example, in California – instead of jumping on the insurance industry’s self-serving bandwagon.

bla February 2, 2006 at 2:42 pm

I think that health care courts are a very unconstitutional and unecesary reform. The status-quo does a fine jod with medmal cases and juries are not stupid

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