Personal Injury Law

Medical Malpractice and the Baltimore Sun

Last week, I wrote on the Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog about the Baltimore Sun taking a position opposing medical malpractice caps, choosing the new, innovative path of side stepping the substance of this issue and trying to demonize trial lawyers. The Baltimore Sun responded Sunday by printing a letter to the editor offering the opposing view on damage caps, explaining how children who lose a parent by the carelessness of someone else are woefully under-compensated. In other news yesterday, Larry Summers is stepping down from his position as Director of the National Economic Council to co-host The View.

Oh, wait. Those things didn?t happen. Instead, the Sun printed a ?me too? editorial from Timonium doctor Mark Hass:

At a time when the nation's economy is slumping and the governor is proposing to mandate that Maryland hospitals and physicians provide more free care to lower-income families, it's ironic that the state House Judiciary Committee, led by trial lawyer Joseph F. Vallario Jr., is proposing legislation to roll back the reforms in the state's medical malpractice insurance policies enacted in 2004 ("Attack of the trial lawyers," editorial, Feb. 17).

Such a rollback would ultimately result in higher malpractice insurance rates for doctors and hospitals, higher health care costs for consumers, higher health insurance premiums for businesses, and, of course, higher incomes for well-heeled trial lawyers.

Perhaps the "attack" of these lawyers on physicians and hospitals will only abate when enough doctors have left Maryland and enough hospitals have closed that they no longer have anyone left to sue.

Dr. Mark Haas
Timonium

Full post as published by Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on February 23, 2009 (boomark / email).