Nader Group Urges Improving Patient Safety, Removing Dangerous Doctors

January 17, 2007

  • January 17, 2007 at 1:30 am
    Naysayer says:
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    Public Citizen, the one last week that complained that insurers were making money and others of their ilk?

    They base their findings on half-truths and blast them to all the media outlets to spread disinformation to the public.

    Nothing more than socialist fronts trying to destroy big business is my opinion.

  • January 17, 2007 at 2:16 am
    Corvair says:
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    Not necessarily socialists, more likely a front for trial lawyers. They pour money into groups like this that they can hide behind while the public is deceived as to who is advancing their agenda. Meanwhile, it seems like \”concerned citizens\” are running a \”grassroots\” movement.

    If there is no need for tort reform, why are all the MD\’s fleeing Pennsylvania? Where have all the OBGYN\’s gone?

  • January 17, 2007 at 2:45 am
    Mr. Recall says:
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    In PA they have gone due to high premiums. The article states statistics that these high premiums are due to the claims of a small percentage of doctors, and that they are not justified, they article says that premiums do not need to be as high as they are. The group is run by Ralph Nader who has run for president and has nothing to do with lawyers. This is all in the article btw.

  • January 17, 2007 at 5:39 am
    Liz Arnone says:
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    I was a victim of med. malpractice and found I had absolutely no recourse. If you would like details of my story, please contact me.

    I am glad to see you taking on this problem.

    Liz Arnone

  • January 18, 2007 at 8:58 am
    GB says:
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    Do the payments also relate to whether or not the doc was negligent?

  • January 18, 2007 at 9:00 am
    Corvair says:
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    It\’s all in the article – that makes it true? The truth is that this outfit is a trial lawyer front. Why are premiums high? Because of trial lawyers, not doctors. Why are medical costs going up? Because of govt regs, fear of not testing, and trial layers, not doctors. Ralph Nader is a fraud and a megalomaniac.

  • January 18, 2007 at 9:47 am
    Glenn Goldfarb, Esq. says:
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    The reality is that doctors are not fleeing Pennsylvania. Licensing is at an all time high. The only ones leaving are the ones who have deservedly seen their rates increase due to their own acts of negligence.

  • January 18, 2007 at 9:54 am
    Corvair says:
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    Much like West Virginia, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine has also seen dramatic liability insurance premium hikes in the past few years. \”In 1997, we paid $4.4 million to cover all of our clinical faculty and the hospital, and now we are paying $24 million in premiums,\” says Michael Weitekamp, M.D., chief medical officer at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and professor of clinical medicine at Penn State. \”In our next budget year, we might have to pay as much as $30 million.\” http://www.aamc.org/newsroom/reporter/july02/medicalmalpractice.htm

    Iguess UPenn is just abusing the hell out of its patients.

  • January 18, 2007 at 11:40 am
    LLCJ says:
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    The flaws to this study are staggering, and (to me) calls in to question the integrity of the Public Citizen Group.

    -It uses medians in its claims, when rates are based on means. Means are significantly higher, and more statistically relevant. Even Kevin Drum, an opponent of tort reform, calls the use of medians evidence of an \”axe to grind\”.

    -Study adjusts for inflation, when medical costs have increased far more than inflation. Admittedly, this increase is due in part to Med mal, but the ommission is noteworthy.

    -The study starts its cut-off date at 1991, but fails to note that reformers thought malpractice costs were too high in 1991. From 1975 (the earliest data available) to 1991, medical malpractice costs increased 2.2 times as fast as GDP, while medical inflation grew as fast as GDP.

    -The study makes a big deal of some declines that began after 2003, but fails to note the large increases from 1991 to 2003 that prompted the renewed complaints. It also fails to note that 2003 is too \”green\”, much of the cases reported in 03 to now are still in litigation or in settlement talks.

    -The page designer very effectively used a lot of nifty tricks to dampen the visual effect of increases over time: big thick lines and points that obscure where the points actually are; in some graphs, there is an artificially-elongated Y-axis with lots of white space to dampen the trend line.

    -Even with all of these dampening adjustments, the actual data in the Public Citizen report shows a huge increase in median judgment from 1991 to 2005 (and an even larger one from 1995 to 2001) consistent with what reformers are claiming. Solution? Just caption the graph \”Judgments Constant When Adjusted For Inflation [sic]\” even when the graph shows nothing of the sort, and announce that reformers are committing a \”hoax.\”

    -The study talks of \”million-dollar judgments\”, but adjusts it for inflation, while eliding whether it\’s talking about \”million-1991-dollar judgments\” or \”million-2005-dollar judgments.\” If it\’s the former misleading figure, as one guesses given the consistency in statistical choices in the rest of the paper, the \”million-dollar judgments\” are really two-million-dollar judgments because of the artificially high deflator used.

    -By focusing on payments to patients, Public Citizen ignores the largest part of the malpractice cost, which is payments to attorneys, which has been rising even faster than payments to patients.

    -The study conflates \”medical errors\” with \”medical malpractice\”, even though the two are different. Of course, the study trots out the discredited Institute of Medicine statistic, which has become wildly popular through repetition if not accuracy. (It\’s ironic that many of the anti-reformers who parrot the IOM statistic criticize Towers Perrin for its annual measurements of tort costs, even though Towers Perrin is forthright about their study\’s narrow scope and limitations.)

    -The study repeats the standard trope of \”small percentage of doctors responsible for large percentage of malpractice\” without making any adjustments or cross-checks to see if these numbers are within the range of risk-adjusted random statistical chance.

    (Source http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/003416.php)

  • January 18, 2007 at 2:27 am
    Misty Meanor says:
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    Settlements on injury claims rarely ever deal with actual negligence on either party. anyone can (and does) sue and the carriers pay out claims because is it easier and cheaper to settle out (regardless of negligence) the claim than fight it and take it to trial. Juries are famously crazy at giving high awards on b.s., frivilous lawsuits. As for the post by Liz, I really can\’t believe a word you said as there are a ton of ambulance chasing attorneys for you to choose from.



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