Fair Compensation for Doctors vs. The Rights of Brain Damaged Children
A couple weeks ago, Wayne M. Willoughby of Gershon, Willoughby, Getz & Smith, LLC, spoke to a class of graduate level students at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine about medical malpractice from the perspective of a malpractice lawyer who represents children with Cerebral Palsy. The class consisted of medical students, journalists, freelance researchers and writers, and others interested in medicine. He shared the floor that evening with an OB/GYN leader the “tort reform” movement in Maryland, who was there to offer his perspective on the topic.
Given the factually erroneous and often outlandish claims made over the past several years by those seeking to limit the rights of brain damaged babies, it was surprising that the end of the doctor’s presentation with how much the doctor and lawyer were in agreement.
The doctor candidly told the class that damage caps on pain and suffering are irrelevant to lowering malpractice premiums – a point patients’ rights advocates have been making for years. Likewise, the doctor acknowledged that frivolous lawsuits are not the cause of high malpractice premiums, a concession previously made by Medical Mutual’s CEO to a Maryland Senate committee in October 2004 (as reported at the time in the Baltimore Sun).
The students also heard the doctor explain that the real problem for physicians in not the high cost of medical malpractice insurance. The real problem is that doctors in Maryland are nearly the lowest reimbursed physicians in the United States. Again, this is a point patients’ rights advocates have been making for years.
Fifteen years ago, the doctor received $3,000 in insurance reimbursement for an ordinary vaginal delivery of a baby, $4,800 for a surgical delivery. Today, for the same services insurance companies reimburse obstetricians in Maryland less than half those amounts. Because of the dramatic cut in his income for delivering babies, the doctor said he was unable to keep up with the costs of malpractice insurance. Thus, he stopped delivering babies.
The doctor acknowledged that if insurance reimbursements for delivering babies remained the same as a decade ago, there would have been no fight over the cost of malpractice insurance; he and others simply would have paid their premiums like any other cost of doing business and continued to delivery babies.
So, given the recognition by this physican-leader of the “tort reform” movement that frivolous malpractice lawsuits are not a problem driving up the cost of malpractice insurance, and that damage caps do not lower insurance premiums, perhaps this year physicians will cease their annual efforts to limit the rights of babies with CP. It is time for physicians to focus their energy on an issue that doctors and lawyers can agree on – the need to hold health insurance companies responsible to deal fairly with physicians and patients.
December 21st, 2008 at 3:39 am
Hear, hear!!! Don’t take away the rights of children with CP — fight the insurance companies!!!