The Land of Milk and Money

So far as I am aware -- I have never known anyone who sued a doctor, much less someone who sued a doctor and won big bucks. MAYBE I have a bad memory. (Well, hell, I'm sometimes lucky to remember what I said in the last paragraph I wrote. )

But, I have known plenty of people who believe they were done wrong, or harmed by a doctor or a hospital. Such folks are often talking about suing, but I don't think anyone I know has. Yet, we are constantly hearing from the doctors about how expensive medical malpractice insurance is, and about how they have to constantly "cover our asses" with extraneous tests and procedures so that no one can claim they didn't do their best and follow every avenue.

This raises an interesting question in my mind: If insurance is so very, very expensive and if it is handicapping the work doctors do, and yet there really are not many lawsuits, could it be the problem lies not with the doctors nor their dismal and ill patients but with the insurance companies? Those companies are bastards you know, and what would keep an enterprising entrepreneurial insurance company from milking the medical cow from both sides?

So, they charge the patient a ton of money to cover his health concerns, then they charge the doctors a ton of money to protect themselves against the patient.

I bet, when a jury decides to award millions of dollars to an injured patient, they are thinking not to soak the doctor or the hospital, but the insurance company. Like the banks, the insurers have earned the hatred of the population in ways that doctors never have.