Personal Injury Law

Tort Reform - Radiologist / Wrongful Death Claim Post Draws Criticism

By Steve Lombardi

A Dade County, Florida physician commented after reading Tort Reform - Radiologist tired of waiting, hangs up phone - treating physician doesn't get message - patient dies. Interesting enough his comment had nothing to do with feeling remorse for the patient's family grappling with her untimely death or the problems with the health care system that caused a positive finding to not be relayed to her treating physician. Instead the commenting physician concentrated on advocating forgiveness as the cure.

Does Mr. Lombardi really, truly believe that the threat of a suit for $X, or $3X, will "fix" the problem he describes? The process of encouraging revenge does not create better medicine, or better administration of medicine. How foolish can you be?

Make no mistake about it this has to do with the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would have them do unto you.

What has this got to do with forgiveness? Why does he want to talk about forgiveness' when we have to feed hungry kids? The facts are so clear even a conservative court couldn't turn a blind eye to the malpractice - and still they advocate turning your cheek rather than discussing the problem or offering any solutions for the future. As an attorney what galls me the most is that some time in the future, like our commenting doctor, someone who has bought this argument will suffer a catastrophic injury then sit in some lawyer's office angry that the lawyer can't do anything to satisfy their economic and social losses. That same someone will be furious that this could happen to anyone; let alone them. "Do something!" They will scream. Yes, you paid good money for medical services, and no, you didn't get good medical service, but so what? You asked to be treated this way. You voted it in. You voted for politicians who gave you what you wanted. And now it's your responsibility. Because as you can see by this commenting physician's words he's never going to accept responsibility for what went wrong. It's got nothing to do with revenge or greed as he points out.

Let's talk about greed. When a person's lost the bread winner or had their lives irreversibly changed they aren't thinking of the lottery. They are thinking of things like food, the mortgage, real estate taxes, homeowner's insurance, health insurance, gas prices, auto insurance, heating oil prices, not getting evicted, not being turned away from the doctor's office because they no longer can afford health insurance, braces for the kids, college expenses for the kids, soccer shoes, school supplies and the other myriad of expenses that churn off the economic tread mill they have us running on. I noticed my commenter mentions not one word of how these expenses will be met or even if there are any hungry dependents. No instead he accuses them of being greedy. Well who is the greedy one? Not all doctors agree with this point of view. There are those in the medical profession that give the others a black eye because of their attitudes and high risk ways of practicing medicine. So trust me I'm not picking on all doctors. But where are the voices of those in the medical profession who can add to this dialogue? You can't hide on a golf course thinking social security benefits are an answer to these economic woes. No you can't. That's subsistence living at its worse. No sir, no madam, it's not about subsistence living. It's about the haves and the have-nots. It's not about greed and forgiveness' - heck take over paying the families bills and they will forgive the offending physician on a daily basis.

It's this simple folks; you can't have it both ways. Even Dr. Wax seems to get the gravity of the situation for those that are being treated as unfairly as is being advocated by tort reformists. Who exactly is being greedy? The choice is between those making the mistakes who don't want to be held financially responsible and those who suffer the loss and ask only that they have a right to seek civil redress according to the law. And in answering that question remember, that what goes around comes around.

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on June 16, 2008 (boomark / email).