Professor Dick Startz’s Nov. 14 column, “Malpractice initiatives don’t offer effective prescriptions” is an unrealistic appraisal of the state of medicine in Washington and of doctors’ attempt to fix it with Initiative 330.
The unreality begins when Startz talks about a “patient solution” and compares “goals” of patients, doctors and lawyers. There are seldom “solutions” in economics, simply trade-offs. One cannot talk about the welfare of one group trumping the interests of the rest. What is realistic is to seek reforms which harm no one, while reducing incentives for attorneys to cause medical mischief. I-330 does this.
Doctors have long claimed medical malpractice insurance has skyrocketed due to overly generous awards by the legal system and have called for tort reform. This cause is doubted by Startz based on faulty reasoning and misleading statistics. The frequency of medical malpractice suits hasn’t increased in recent years, so this is not the cost driver, but specious mega-awards have grown. The cost to both patients and doctors is horrendous! Physicians are forced out of risky specialties, such as obstetrics, precisely by high malpractice premiums and many who stay practice expensive, defensive medicine to combat litigation by aggressive attorneys. Both of these are big cost drivers, since the former acts to shrink the supply of qualified doctors and the latter increases the cost of services.
It is illogical to argue on the one hand getting rid of mega-awards would encourage medical negligence, only to concede later that the existing system with its mega-awards doesn’t do that anyway! All of this proves that such arguments against tort reform are both bogus and beside the point. The existing system nails negligent medical practice and pays restitution to patients, neither of which 1-330 impacts.
Nancy Lellelid, M.D.
charles wikman
Granite Falls
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