Oh My Gosh, They May Sue

It amazing that people who are doing something wrong will actually have this stop them sometimes. Not that they are hurting someone, are doing something wrong, or that maybe they deserve to take responsibility for their actions. Does it make that threat a potential deterrent? While I’m involved in lawsuits, I actually would rather see people not hurt others to begin with.

The recent stranding of passengers or should we say sitters on the local Mesaba flight brought this issue up. Apparently after hours of sitting, promises, no water, no lavatories, more promises, more sitting, and maybe a lie or two: people were getting a little hostile. The pilot finally pointed out that this is where lawsuits come from. Maybe that helped to finally get the sitters off the plane. Hopefully, the airlines took care of each and every one of them and won’t let this happen again. Don’t do it and take responsibility when you do something wrong will drop lawsuits more than anything else.

It’s the same kind of things with all of the defensive medician talk that is being used to fight back against real change to health insurance. The reality is that malpractice is a very small part of the system. Also that doctors charge for everything that they do. If they really are doing unnecessary tests I believe that Medicare and Medicaid would be very interested in that list. Sure I’ve heard the anecdotes of a doctor who claimed to have done an MRI because someone asked, but really can’t almost anyone list all the times they were told no on care or were not listened to by the doctor? Sure, there are some outrageous numbers being bandied about right now, I think Palin is claiming $12 billion each year in malpractice costs. Look at the numbers on paper, the claim is ridiculous. If doctors did the right thing and took responsibility when they don’t, we would again not have as many lawsuits. But until then , maybe a little fear of having to do the right thing may not hurt.