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FDA Radiation Investigation Underscores Breadth of Corporate Immunity Sought by Health Care Reform Opponents

By Andy Hoffman

We sorta understood the breadth of immunity that House health care reform opponents want to bestow on reckless medical care companies and institutions.  (Yes that?s right, Mr. Minority Leader Boehner?s defeated bill would have limited the liability of not just incompetent physicians and unsafe hospitals, but also HMOs, nursing homes and drug and device companies.) 

Sometime you?ve gotta look at real cases to get a true sense.  Say for example, the grotesque problem of radiation overdoes involving certain CT scanning equipment, which FDA investigators now suspect may be due to equipment defects involving more than one company (GE and Toshiba to name two) and may be a widespread nationwide problem.  The LA Times Reports:

In Alabama, Becky Coudert, a 59-year-old teacher, received a CT brain perfusion scan Sept. 8 at Huntsville Hospital, according to her Valencia-based lawyer, Rick Patterson, who is representing several victims from Cedars-Sinai.

The scan ruled out that Coudert had suffered a stroke. But within weeks, there was a bald strip circling her head above the ears. Patterson said medical records indicated that she had received several times the appropriate radiation dose, even more than the patients at Cedars-Sinai [in Los Angeles].

The first indication that anything was wrong with the scans came in August when Cedars-Sinai discovered that it had accidentally exposed more than 200 patients to eight times the normal radiation for the procedure.

The overdoses went undetected for 18 months, even as many patients lost hair as a result.

Under Boehner?s House ?substitute? bill, cases involving deaths and injuries due potential machine defects like this could be covered by liability limits.

One doesn?t need a CT scan to see how transparent a corporate gift that would be.

Full post as published by ThePopTort on December 09, 2009 (boomark / email).