re: #84 karmic_inquisitor

It comes down to damages vs punitive awards.

Damages are economic in nature and are relatively straight forward to calculate (loss of work, disability, etc).

Punitive damages, pain and suffering and other such awards are what drive up the bills. That is where the focus needs to fall. These are intangibles and are the area that trial lawyers play up in terms of getting juries to soak “the rich doctors and their rich insurance companies” for some huge amount to teach them a lesson they won’t forget.

They just raise their prices and forget. You and I end up paying for it.

If a jury awards punitive damages and the judge allows them to stand, I think most of the time its safe to say, there must have been some really really bad conduct on the part of the medical provider. Not 100% of course, but as a general rule I think this is true. I think that pain and suffering is the area most likely to be abused because it is subjective. I’m just not sure how to fix the system in a way to protect those who have suffered a great amount, i.e., (to use an extreme and rare example) where a doctor who amputates a healthy limb by mistake.