Medical Malpractice and Tort Reform

We've been studying medical malpractice in my Torts class, so I allegedly now know what the word means. (Yeah, it means the same thing you thought it means, I just read a thick book and went to class to verify it. Science is all about verifiability, baby.)

And, over thanksgiving holiday, malpractice insurance and capping jury awards came up as a subject of conversation, and I wound up saying something that probably made me look extremely cynical (which is funny, because I usually let J do that, but she wasn't there, so I stepped up as best as I could).

(*waves at J* Miss you, dollface! Wish you were here! Though, probably not right this second, 'cause, you know, studying for midterms and my Torts final.)

The cynical statement: I'm not sure there's a direct relationship between capping malpractice awards and the insurance doctors pay. Insurance companies are going to charge doctors whatever they think they can get away with, and they're already got a certain payment level right now. Why would they drop it just because malpractice awards have gone down? That's not what they're in business to do.

So, and here's me dropping the cynicism, instead of capping jury awards in the hopes a trickle-down Reaganomic-esque effect will save doctors from absurdly high malpractice insurance rates, go and and cap the damn rates, instead.

At the very least, there's a direct causal relationship you can affect if you do that.

In other news, Corp Reform discusses the "McDonald's Coffee Case". Now, the truly cool thing is we talked about that case in my Torts class (though not when talking about comparative negligence, which might've made more sense).

Yes, whenever someone hears about that case, they think - she spilled coffee in her lap in a moving car! Git deserves it. I sure thought that.

Well, actually, upon closer inspection, the coffee was negligently, dangerously hot, and the car wasn't moving.

What's negligently hot? Pushing 200 degrees, Fahrenheit, when anything over 140 constitutes a burn hazard. Let's just describe that 180-190 McDonald's coffee temperature range as "well beyond the ordinary consumer's expectations". So, Stella (the plaintiff) was found by the jury to be 20% negligent, and McDonald's the rest - which means in a comparative fault regime, Stella's award for damages for McDonald's is minus the 20% due to her own negligence.

Note that it took a jury award of 2.6 million to get McDonald's attention. The preceding (as Corp Reform points out) 700 other injuries from the uber-hot coffee didn't.

And frankly, that's part of one of the purposes of the tort system: deterrence. And the only way to get the attention of a company that large is hit them with an award whose amount is significant to them. Not to you and me. To them. And other companies like them.

(It appears I'm riffing off topics brought up by Making Light today. Well, at least that way, they're interesting topics.)

And thank you, Corp Reform and Making Light, for helping me study for my Torts final today. I appreciate it.