Wanted to answer this separately. The answer is yes I am for a system that compensates more victims more quickly. And as long as you don’t handicap the plaintiff’s lawyers as opposed to the defense’s lawyers, or try to arbitrarily set pay, then I have no problem if the result is fewer payments.

But that’s not on the table in any way, shape or form. All that’s on the table legislative is arbitrary caps chosen by insurance lobbyists on the value of cases, regardless of their merit or the injury involved.

Did I say “all of you”? No, I said him.

“You once thought we were billing for CT scans too.”

Depends on the practice. There is no set way of doing it.

“Maybe plaintiff’s attorneys should be justifying their fee to more than just their client, particularly considering the cost impact they have on the entire system.”

The complete total of malpractice payments (and remember, much of those payments goes back to the system in the form of payment of past and future medical bills) was 2% of the total cost of health care. Even assuming we could define every procedure that was “defensive medicine”, and even assuming there was a “reform” that eliminated it altogether, at its most optimistic assessments it is less than 10% of the total healthcare bill. So we are not a particularly large driver of healthcare costs.

“you paint yourself (and other plaintiff’s attorneys and the dysfunctional tort system) as the champions of the downtrodden in every one of these discussions…”

Who else is helping these people get compensation? I’m not glorifying it, as at the end of the day it’s a job, but the only people who are representing these people, and after an injury caused by malpractice often the only people who will speak to them, are their lawyers. Physicians don’t want to talk to them, hospitals don’t, and neither do insurers. And those groups certainly aren’t offering to help them pay their medical bills or lost wages, are they?

You once thought we were billing for CT scans too.

Maybe plaintiff’s attorneys should be justifying their fee to more than just their client, particularly considering the cost impact they have on the entire system.

As for being “Champion of the aggrieved,” you paint yourself (and other plaintiff’s attorneys and the dysfunctional tort system) as the champions of the downtrodden in every one of these discussions… along with plenty of class warfare thrown in. “How are the injured supposed to be compensated without us plaintiff’s attorneys fighting against those rich doctors and their rich/evil insurers?”

My bromides aside, I have a bigger, and serious question: would you support a med-mal system that compensated more victims, yet resulted in plaintiffs’ attorneys making less money?

As for plaintiff’s counsel, they need only justify it to their clients. You know any of them complaining about the fee? Probably not, since your colleagues and their insurer were giving them the stiff arm before they hired a lawyer, who put his time and money on the line.

No one is claiming to be “Champion of the Aggrieved” but you. Of course, when one of your colleagues leaves someone a paraplegic through the negligence, you’re nowhere to be found. The rest of us recognize that you will quickly go broke fronting tens of thousands of dollars to fight a doctor and his wealthy insurer for free. Like too many physicians, the basics of running a business appear to elude you.

If it’s not your job to say what anyone should make, why do you keep calling what everyone else makes “obscene”? Still waiting on you to let us know how the victims of your colleagues negligence should pay for legal representation if not via contingency fee. I guess it’s easier to hold your opinions if you don’t think about the practical result of them. Ignorance is bliss.

It’s not my job to say what anyone should make. I do think it’s your job (and that of your colleagues) to justify taking half any award, and to then justify walking away from cases where you can’t get a big payoff. You can’t have it both ways, Champion of the Aggrieved (but only if I make a big payday).

I’m sorry you find the truth obscene, but that’s who caps fall hardest on. You may not like the facts and the results of what you support, but it doesn’t change them. Caps, which you support, screw the weakest members of our society. You make a lifetime of pain and suffering, regardless of the injury or the cause, equal to about what the average surgeon makes in one year. Talk about obscene!

Since you find it so abhorrent, how would you suggest people with injuries who can’t work and mountains of medical bills pay their attorneys? Hell, how would you suggest they even pay the case expenses?

I guess it’s easier to throw out words like obscene and abhorrent than to actually do anything to help those people. At least when you’re trying to save a few bucks on your malpractice insurance.

I don’t think there should be caps on anyones’ income. I think the current plaintiff attorney payment scheme is fully abhorrent.

I have no doubt you do a lot of charity work, though, and I commend you for it. Not really sure the relevance of your good works to this conversation, though. You may be a fine person, other than your willingness to act as point man so insurers can make a few more dollars (and hopefully you too if they pass the savings on) off the backs of elderly and children. We all have our blind spot. But it doesn’t really change the merits of the actual legislation. Nor does it tell us any more about what work was involved in these alleged “outrageous” fees.

I think Grunt just doesn’t like it when people make a certain amount of money, regardless of the fact that he has no idea what the work involved in earning it was. He’d probably like a nice 90% tax on anyone who makes more than him. Problem with that theory is that there’s always someone who makes less than you who thinks their salary ought to be the top!

My group is independent and does its own billing, which isn’t by the hour, it’s by level/type of service. The hospital services are billed by the hospital (cat scans, labs, etc), and we see no cut or percentage of that money (that would be illegal). I have to buy my own health/disability insurance; no benefits.

Some docs are hospital employees, and get paid a flat hourly rate plus/minus some benefits.

Some docs are “independent contractors” and receive a flat hourly rate and no benefits.

Note: the hourly rate you get paid in the latter two scenarios bears no relation to the amount you bill, with the exception of groups that have a productivity-based incentive plan.

The only salaried ER docs I know are in the .gov or .mil system, and having done that gig, I’ll say this: they can keep it.