Last week Kane Gorny, died of dehydration while in a leading British teaching hospital – his nurses evidently forgot about him. So much for excellence in nationalized health care.
And of course in most countries you will have a tough time suing the government for its negligence. This is referred to as “sovereign immunity” and goes back to the days when one could not sue the King of England when he did you wrong.
But there are times that you can sue the government in the US, however it is a tougher road to travel than litigating against a big corporation or hospital. The government gets stubborn and will spend $20,000 to keep from paying you $10,000. Bureaucrat’s reputations are on the line and they will spend bucketfuls of your money to protect their personal reputation.
Much of the debate about health care in America has been about medical malpractice reform. That is an important subject and we need reasonable limits on what the payouts should be. But even if the surgeon amputates your left leg when you needed the right leg amputated, his medical malpractice insurance company will fight to reduce what you should receive in damages. You will have to hire an attorney for the fight and plenty of medical experts (quite expensive) and even if you win your attorneys and experts will receive a big chunk of the judgment.
Interestingly, if a 25 year old financial analyst (earning $200,000 per year and with a family of four) loses his one remaining good leg the “damages” will be substantially more than a 60 year old retired man that also loses his good leg. Because the jury is typically instructed to calculate the number of years remaining of expected salary times the expected earnings per year.
But in America patients that have been damaged by lousy (not just slightly poor) medical care have the chance to receive compensation. If as a society we simply stated “tough luck”, that would reduce costs, and probably lead to sloppier care. I doubt if many Americans want to see the patient that loses his good leg not get compensated but there is a cost to it that is greater here than in nationalized systems.
Much of our controversy has related to “punitive damages”. These are additional awards by the jury from the defendant to the injured patient which are intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in this type of sloppy medical care. These punitive damages are in addition to the actual damages and are intended to “send a message” to the defendant.
But if the medical mistakes were unclear or just bad luck most juries are reluctant to punish the doctors that they generally trust. Except we still hear stories where a jury awards $100 million punitive damage award to a family of a deceased patient. These awards typically get reduced by the appeals court and in many states the legislatures have set maximum punitive damages as a percentage of the actual damages.
You won’t see the family of this Brit receiving any punitive damages and they may not even receive any actual damages or payments from the government at all. The British system saves two ways – lower medical malpractice payments and they can cut corners at will. Not a great way to lower costs.
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