Local Law Blogs

Sammy Thompson has spent 40 years defending medical malpractice cases.

Best and brightest doctors get sued and they get sued a lot.

Makes te doctors risk adverse

(Dont we want doctors to be risk adverse)

Pushes doctors to order MRIs an Ct scans.

Defensive medicine is wide spread. 3:4 doctors practice defensive. Also 5:6 is defensive

Cites a debunked study that says 1/3 of all health care costs are defensive medicine.

Citing COB study that says malpractice does increase costs of health care. But fails to say that % is very low and almost unmeasureable via COB.

Cites Erskine Bowles cmntee on budget.

Tort reform makes: more stable, more consistent, predictable.

26 states have caps on non-economic damages. You can bing stability andnprdictability with a cap.

Actual Medicaid v charged Medicals.

Providers accept actual expense v the "charged" medical bills. Cites case with chrarged medical bills of 1 million but paid of 250k. Let the jury know the truth.

Collateral source rule misleads the jury about expenses. The truth is future expenses will be paid by health insurance or other sources.

Jury needs to know the truth.

(he does not say the jury needs to know the truth he works for an insurance company and the defendant has 5 Millin in insurance.