🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1586@nazgul.UUCP>, bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:
> You'll need to look elsewhere for why health care is expensive here.

     I've got a suggestion with regards to where to look.  This is the way I
see the problem:

     Major cost of health providers overhead is malpractice insurance.

     What is the (theoretical) purpose of the court system in a civil
situation?  Provides a means for a wrongly injured party to seek compensation
from the party inflicting the injury.

     What is the purpose of insurance?  To spread the costs associated with
a risk over a group at risk.

     So where does malpractice insurance fit in?  Does it make sense to allow
a Doctor who screwed up and harmed a patient to spread the cost of compensating
the victim over the entire medical community, and then have that cost turned
around and passed back on to the patient?

     Well, if the court system was fair, if frivilous law suits weren't
common place, if verdicts were based on factual evidence rather than emotional
considerations, then perhaps legitimate practitioners wouldn't need malpractice
insurance, but right now that isn't the case.

     To make things worse there is a positive feedback loop here.  Doctors,
being pinched on one end by high malpractice insurance cost, and on the other
by managed health care organizations are left with one option to increase
their margin, see more patients.  This means spending less time with each
patient, increasing the liklihood of mis-diagnoses and resulting malpractice
suits.  Further, to protect themselves, they are forced to do more diagnostic
tests, not so much because they are unsure of their diagnosis, but because
they might be forced to prove, in court, that their diagnosis was reasonable.
This further drives up the cost of providing health care.

     There needs to be reform in the court system.  There needs to be real
substantial penalties associated with frivilous law suits, or those that are
designed to transfer wealth as opposed to seeking compensation for damages.
There needs to be larger penalties for scam artists faking injuries in an
attempt to collect damages and there needs to be stiff penalties for any
lawyer or anyone else who cooperates in such scams.

     Until this happens, no amount of trying to redistribute the costs of
providing health care are going to provide relief to spiraling health care
costs and inaccessability for many people who can't afford needed health
care.