Are You Sick of Lawsuits ? Part I

In case other readers here haven't already heard of it,
I'd like to bring their attention to very valuable and very useful website.

SickofLawsuits.com documents general and medical malpractice legal abuse in the
US and seeks to educate patients / the public
about how the current, flawed medical malpractice system
and current, general US "sue-for -profit" culture and industry
impact _on them personally._

Here is how they frame the problem:

Healthcare Under Attack:

"Personal injury lawyers’ attacks on our health care system have serious
negative consequences on the quality and affordability of the care we receive.

It has contributed to a shortage of certain specialty doctors—especially in
obstetricians and general surgeons—in many areas of the country and helped spur
a rise in health care costs that jeopardizes access to life-saving care and
innovations, even for the middle class.

Though personal injury lawyers would lead you to believe that their lawsuits
against health care providers, hospitals and health care companies are in the
best interest of the consumer because they target “bad actors,” the truth of the
matter is that, for them, it’s about their pursuit of personal wealth.

In the wake of this greed, the rest of the country is left with the
consequences:

- Doctors are afraid to practice medicine.

- Health care costs rise as litigation costs are passed on to patients.

- Access to health care is limited.

- Medical innovation is threatened and patient health is jeopardized.

More detail here:
http://www.sickoflawsuits.com/threats/HealthcareUnderAttack.cfm


SickofLawsuits also advocates for the proper principles of legal reform.

Excerpt from the SickofLawsuits Mission Statement:

Why the Sick of Lawsuits Campaign Was Created:

"Our civil justice system is under attack by personal injury lawyers who game
the legal system for personal profit in the name of “consumer protection.” The
reality is that consumers are the ones getting fleeced.

These abusive lawsuits harm the economy and job creation, threaten our access to
affordable, quality health care, and delay justice for the truly injured by
clogging our courts. Ultimately, lawsuit abuse hurts all of us."

What We Support:

"We support a system that would compensate those who are injured without costly
and time-consuming litigation while preventing our legal system from being
hijacked by personal injury lawyers and run-away litigation."

Descritpion of principles of proper legal reform here:
http://www.sickoflawsuits.org/mission/index.cfm

My commentary on above:

While many physicians many be aware of this (having lived through the nightmare
of a frivolous lawsuit, I wonder how many of the ideas expressed above are
equally familiar to our family members, friends, acquaintances and patients?

Some may have heard doctors complain in general terms-
and listened sympathetically, then turned back
to the day-to-day issues and events that they _really_ care about...
and which "really" effect their day-to-day lives.

Most others probably tuned it out- on the premise that this issue doesn't
effect them at all thinking :

...."It' s just a "doctor thing" .....why do I need to care about it ?
...."It 's just a cost of doctors doing business (like buying office supplies,
an Xray machine, paying utilitiy bills, paying staff, etc?? )
...."It goes with the territory.....every job has its unpleasant side...
...."It's unavoidable......stop complaining .....just suck it up"
...."hey that sucks but, What can I, or anyone else, do about it anyway ? "

( This last one will be covered in part 2 of this post. )

Medical blogger is fun...it's interesting, educational, intellectually
stimulating.

It's also very professionally important:

- learning about issues of vitally impacting the health and well-being of the
profession.....
- discussing the signs, and symptoms of disease throughout the health profession
on a "organ system by organ system " basis....
- searching for the underlying pathogens... the underlying genetic defects or
susceptabilities...the neoplastic processes metastasizing throughout the
profession
which have resulted in its presently generalized state of debilitiation,
and continues to progressively erodes its vitality and threaten to cause its
ultimate demise from multi-organ failure....

However, if the myriad of disease processes are not each, individually
diagnosed
and treated accurately- with current, state-of-the art care available right
here in the US,
rather than with snake -oil, leeches or any other inefficacious, out-dated,
previously fashionable "cures"- all of which have been offered and tried in
the past,
here or in other countries- and all of which have failed spectacularly in the
past.

From both a professional - and a personal - standpoint,
I think we are all trying to delay or avoid the day when a "code blue" is called
and crusading government bureaucrats in white coats rush in to "resuscitate the
patient", thereby putting it on a bureacratic tax-payer financed,
ever-diminishing, dopamine drip and life-support ....

When this happens, it will be thoroughly appropriate to notify the next-of-kin -
since a government take-over will certainly lead to a "brain drain" in US
medicine, as the 20th century has shown to occur time and again in all
socialized medical systems, socialism generally, throughout the
world-wide...with the US being no different in that respect.

Like Terry Schiavo, after a painful period many years of lingering on a
ventilator, the brain-dead patient will eventually be dead.....
and so will some of the real patients who hope in the future to depend on it to
preserve and prolong their own lives.

To attempt to prevent all this, as fun and interesting as medical blogging is,
nothing will _ever_ change until the proper, rational ideas are taken out of the
self-contained, anti-septic medical blogosphere and into the _real world of
patients)_
- where viable, long-term real world solutions can be discussed openly,
advocated publicly and enacted.