Oh my god that is gruesome!

[Denny Crane]

"Fuck you, you get single payer whether you like it or not."

Medicare is single payer.

http://jacksonville.com/business/columnists/2012-10-03/story/doctors-are-leaving-medicaid-medicare

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the United States will be short nearly 63,000 doctors by 2015. By 2025, that figure could double.
Medical schools are producing one primary care doctor for every two needed.

Nearly a third of doctors refuse to accept new Medicaid patients, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


The government pays below-market rates for Medicaid patients — between 34 and 42 percent below what doctors receive from privately insured patients. Some doctors lose money on every Medicaid beneficiary they see.


By expanding the program to cover one in four Americans, Obamacare will only exacerbate this state of affairs.

It’s no wonder that doctors are pessimistic about the law’s impact on health care. Half believe that hospital closures caused by Obamacare will reduce access to care. And 83 percent of physicians foresee increased wait times for primary care appointments.

Forty-nine percent of doctors under the age of 40 report that Obamacare will negatively impact their practices.

Some 43 percent of all doctors are thinking about retiring in the next five years — thanks in large part to the headaches created by health reform.

 

[The_Lillard_King]

I'm all in favor of restitution of actual damages. I sat on a jury trial where a little girl was thrown from a car and paralyzed from the neck down as a result. The parents sued everyone they could, including Chrysler. Their expert witnesses testified that a fair judgment amount would be on the order of $3M to $6M, which would cover her living expenses and medical care needs for life.

Meanwhile, two recent cases in Maryland awarded $21M and $55M.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/20...ice-gary-wais-national-practitioner-data-bank

A 2010 survey done for the American Medical Association found that more than 60 percent of doctors had been sued by the time they were 55, and among obstetrician/gynecologists and surgeons it was 70 percent. Among the suits, 65 percent were dropped or dismissed and 5 percent went to trial. Defendants prevailed 90 percent of the time.

Doctors and hospitals said they are bracing for a trickle-down effect of more lawsuits and rising malpractice insurance rates because of the recent judgments. They argue that malpractice costs could become so burdensome that doctors would decide to stop working in certain locations and specialties.

"Hospitals who provide medical care to high-risk patients — particularly obstetrical patients — are questioning how much longer they will be able to continue providing that care in Baltimore City," said Mary Lynn Carver, a spokeswoman for the University of Maryland Medical Center, in an email.

Yes, the original post is a great argument for doctors being scared of lawsuits and deciding not to work in certain locations and specialties.

Insurance companies are doing something right if society reads that story and the discussion turns into doctors have too much burden on them and lawsuits are ruining the medical profession.