Northwestern premedical students should pay attention to a demonstration that took place last Tuesday at Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago.
The plaza and its surrounding streets were filled with doctors and other health-care professionals in their lab coats and scrubs, carrying signs that read, “Who will deliver your baby?” and “Will your doctor be there?”
From the looks of this rally and the numbers, medical malpractice is becoming an issue affecting everyone — scrubs or no scrubs.
These professionals came from hospitals all over Illinois to support federal legislation proposed in January. The bills would limit — to $250,000 — awards to victims of medical malpractice for non-quantifiable damages such as pain and suffering, and punitive damages to twice actual losses up to $250,000.
Under this legislation damages paid for actual financial losses, such as lost wages and medical expenses, would not be included in the $250,000 cap.
Those who support this new legislation believe the rising cost of lawsuits has made malpractice insurance unaffordable for many doctors, who are forced to close their practices, raise their fees or move someplace with less expensive insurance.
For example, in states such as California insurance is less expensive, because they have already passed legislation limiting medical-malpractice awards and limiting attorneys’ contingency fees.
Women face the most serious consequences of high medical malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance rates for obstetricians have increased 150 percent over the last four years, and about one in 11 obstetricians now refuses to deliver babies. Instead they limit themselves to practicing gynecology, according to Self magazine.
“I’m not looking forward to sacrificing a large chunk of my annual salary to an insurance company,” said Rachel Engen, an NU premed junior. “But I know that I will be fine — it’s my patients who will have to pay higher rates for medical care to cover the premiums, or drive longer distances to find a doctor who can afford to stay in practice.”
Across the street from the medical professionals rally last Tuesday, the Coalition for Consumer Rights and Victims of Malpractice held a news conference. There they asserted that patients must have the right to receive damages for doctors’ mistakes.
“Doctors have a lot to complain about. They are being squeezed,” Gail Siegel, the coalition’s executive director, told the Chicago Tribune. “However, the solution is not to punish injured people.”
Patients do have a right to some compensation for a doctor’s gross negligence. But life is not perfect, and the rest of society needs to decide how high a price we are willing to pay for mistakes.
And where is all the money going? It does not seem to be the victims.
According to the Physician Insurers Association of America, lawyers generally get one-third to one-half of the amount awarded to the victim.
Although malpractice lawsuits are intended to protect victims from a doctor’s mistakes, high insurance costs ultimately hurt all patients by denying them quality care from doctors who have done no wrong.
Think about that on the long ride to California.
