1/9     I would like to hear a good argument for the proposals to limit
        non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits to $250,000 as
        suggested by president Bush.  It seems to me that if a doctor is
        drunk, high, or otherwise clearly negligent and kills a family
        member, $250,000 is a paltry amount for punishment/compensation. Thanks
        \_ Fine.  Put the max at $500K then.  Or a mil.  Or two.
           \_ Would you adjust this for inflation, cost of living, etc.?
              Why not just let a jury decide or pass some guidelines instead
              of choosing a single number for all situations?
              \_ I was trying to figure out if the op is sensitive to the
                 level of a max or to the concept of a max altogether.  His
                 original post gave the impression he was questioning the
                 value of max but not the existence of max.
              \_ How about setting the max to (doctor's insurance coverage
                 + 5 years previous gross earning)?
        \_ What is the minimum amount of malpractice insurance required by
           law, if any?
        \_ A better proposal is to have all lawyers talk about Plato and Kant.
           And only yale law graduates + psb can argue cases before jury.
        \_ I'm fairly sure killing a family member has more economic damage
           than $250K.  Basically, punishing one doctor punishes *all* doctors.
           Doctors are people and they make mistakes.  If they're criminal
           mistakes, they shouldn't be allowed to work again in the field.
           That's pretty heavy punishment already.
           \_ If the family member is not working and had no plans to work
              I don't think you can claim economic damages.  For example,
              if it was your child that died, you can't claim economic damages.
                \_ Actually you may be able to get some damages based
                   on future earnings and loss of consortium.
              I agree that doctors are people too and can make mistakes.  Also,
              medicine is a practice not a science and sometimes things go
              wrong through no fault of the doctor.  The problem is that a
              small percentage of doctors are responsible for the
              majority of malpractice insurance payouts.  This is because the
              medical profession is self-regulated and doctors rarely are
              prevented from practicing even after gross errors.  For example,
              most state medical boards do not share information.  So if a
              doctor in Nevada screws up so bad to get his license removed,
              he can just move to CA and continue practicing.  It seems to me
              that politicians should focus on preventing bad doctors from
              driving up malpractice insurance rather than protecting them
              from facing the consequences of their mistakes.
              \- another approach to the problem is to allow punative
                 damages for negligence BUT the $ doenst go to the plaintiff.
                 he would only be compensated for his losses. he is not "owed"
                 that money, but the fines exist to incentivize correct
                 behavior. --psb
                 \_ That seems quite reasonable to me in principle.  I think
                    the only practical difficulty is that preventing $ from
                    going to the plantiff reduces the plantiffs ability to
                    hire lawyers.  While this may be good in the sense that
                    everyone seems to hate lawyers, our justice system is
                    definetly biased towards deep pockets.  Attorneys I know
                    have told me that they often try to bury the opposition in
                    paperwork.  If the opponent is poorer then they win, and if
                    the opponent is wealthy then the lawyers on both sides win.
                    Still, this approach seems worth debating while the
                    hard limit on punitive damages seems indefensible to me.
                    \-i have not been following the news about this closely
                      but i thought it was "emotional damages" not punative
                                           \-meaning non-economic but
                                             compensatory damages. like
                                             if a doctor accidentally gives
                                             you a penectomy you dont have
                                             to be a male ho to claim
                                             compensatory damages.
                      damages that were capped. i assume the guiding principle
                      that people should not be allowed to benefit from a
                      crime is still preserved. the other possibility is to
                      have "expert juries" in complex cases. some of the
                      testimony in the ford pinto case was pretty amazing ...
                      like there was a conversy over what one burned victim
                      said before he died in the hospital and ford clained
                      something like "his lips were too badly burned to have
                      said word X". i no longer have to energy to discuss the
                      incetive alignment problem. --psb
        \_ It all depends on where you focus. For the sake of argument
           lets focus on the doctor rather than the family. When a kid
           comes to a doctor and is in need of some procedure, do you
           want the doctor to think, if I do this procedure today this
           kids mom might sue my pants off b/c I took a sudafed this
           morning and the family lawyer will say that sudafed == high
           if something goes wrong? Or do you want the doctor to think
           about the kid and focus on the kids problem and how best to
           resolve the problem?
           If you don't cap non-economic damages (usually pain and
           suffering), you are likely to get huge jury awards even in
           cases where the defendants behavior wasn't all that bad.
           This acts as a disincentive to many doctors. They would
           rather not take action b/c of the fear of getting sued.
           This leads to lots of patients not getting timely care and
           suffering many complications that could be avoided.
           If you cap non-economic damages, doctors may take some risk
           in the care of patients which could result in many patients
           getting timely care and avoiding complications.
        \_ Why not limit the civil suit damages across the board and
           then expose perpetrators to the criminal justice system? The
           gross negligence resulting in death sound a lot like
           manslaughter to me.  If anything, the licensed doctor should
           be MORE guilty than the unlicensed practitioner, IMHO. (The
           latter can get hit w/ additional fraud charges). Put 'em in
           prison instead of suing their pants off.