The cost of
malpractice insurance is often cited as a major culprit in increasing fees and
costs for providing healthcare. But the cost of the insurance itself is only a
small factor, rather it is the culture malpractice lawsuits has created that
has helped to create the modern health care economics we now have.
The problem is in our current
society if anything goes wrong in any aspect of life, someone has to pay.
Personal responsibility is gone, someone, something is always to blame. If we
go back to the turn of the century, the balance of rights of people vs.
business and government agencies was probably to one sided for the business and
government. In that era if you went to a business a bought a defective product
and injured yourself with it, tough luck, next time don’t buy from that store.
Obviously things needed to
change, but now the pendulum has swung too far. The infamous McDonalds’ coffee
burn lawsuit is probably the highlight of this new “someone has to pay”
mentality. But numerous other examples of this attitude in all aspects of life
drive prices and the cost of doing business up. McDonalds’ paid there
settlement, but then they had to reprint billion of cups with the words
“caution coffee is hot” on them. They had to put signs up in all their
restaurants indicating it isn’t a good idea to pour hot coffee on your skin.
That cost was passed on to all of us.
Healthcare is no different. Every
time a doctor gets sued for something even if the doctor believes he did the
right thing he will change the way he practices. When a doctor loses a lawsuit
because if by chance he had ordered a lab test for something that may have
picked up some disease no matter how rare, he now will order that test for all
his patients even if it is not in the best interest of the patient or the
society in whole, because he will no longer take any chances he may miss
something. The doctor has now taken his years of education and experience and
will not use that knowledge to make a decision; rather he will play not to
lose, even if better judgment would rule against such decision. The one person
who doesn’t know that coffee is hot has made the vast majority of us who do,
change the way everyone does things. Game changer!
The cost of defensive practicing
healthcare is probably mind blowing, when you consider every unnecessary drug
prescribed, test ordered and procedure done to “cover your butt”. Dentistry is
right there too. A great everyday example: you don’t need an antibiotic every
time a root canal is done, but if you are the dentist that had a patient
hospitalized after a root canal that became infected, guess what you are
prescribing an antibiotic after every root canal. The reaction might be, well
good, no one will ever be hospitalized after a root canal ever again. But you
can’t live life nor practice medicine or run a government or business with that
mentality. Number one, it will bankrupt any system that behaves like that and
it is not in the best interest of individuals to be treated to avoid one in a
million occurrences. When does it end? Either when the healthcare system is
unsustainable or people understand that there are risks in living and not
everything can or should be avoided to achieve a zero risk world.
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