John Murtha (D-OH) Dies of Medical Malpractice

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

Representative John Murtha (D-OH) Dies Due to Medical Malpractice

Being elected by ones constituents to serve in the United States Congress is certainly enough to deserve some recognition by the public. But John Murtha was one of the most effective, dynamic and controversial Representatives to ever serve on Capitol Hill.

Representative Murtha was Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which basically means that he was in charge of determining how taxpayer money was spent on defense. It’s no secret that the United States spends an enormous amount of money on weapons and logistics for our military, and Representative Murtha was one of the key figures in charge of the purse strings.

As a result of his position, this made Representative Murtha a very influential Congressman. The United States defense budget does more than protect our nation and its interests. It also provides jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans. One congressional district might have a factory that makes one part of a jet or a tank, while another might have a company that provides defense analysis, while another might have a plant that manufactures rifle scopes.  Since there is not one Congressman on Capitol Hill who wanted to say no to federal defense spending occurring in his district, and since John Murtha was one of the men in charge of where defense dollars got spent, he had a great deal of pull in Washington, D.C.

By all accounts, he took a great deal of advantage of his position. He earned a reputation as an old school “Pork Barrel” politician, making sure that his district in Pennsylvania received a great deal of federal money. He received enormous criticism for this, but the interesting thing about “pork barrel” or “earmark” spending is that it is usually defined as “federal spending that occurs in every district except your own.” The spending that occurs in your district hardly ever comes under the same criticism as the spending that occurs in other districts.

Congressman Murtha could hardly be blamed for wanting to get as much money for his district as he possibly could. In the first place, he was hardly alone in securing federal dollars. And secondly, his district in Pennsylvania was economically crushed by the decline of the steel and mining industries. If he hadn’t done everything he could have for his district, he would not have been doing his job.

It should also be mentioned that Mr. Murtha was one of the first major public officials to come out against the war in Iraq. Considering his position among the defense and military community, it took an extraordinary amount of courage for him to oppose the war then, which must be admitted even if you didn’t personally agree with his opinion.

If there is even such a thing as an “ordinary congressman,” it has to be said that there was nothing “ordinary” about John Murtha. His loss on Capitol Hill will certainly be felt. And what makes his death even more tragic is that John Murtha’s death didn’t need to happen. Mr. Murtha was undergoing laparoscopic surgery in January when his intestine was inadvertently nicked during the operation. This cut led to an infection, which led to his death.

It should be mentioned that Congressman Murtha had what could certainly be called a “Cadillac” insurance plan. Members of Congress (as well as the President of the United States) are treated at Bethesda Naval Hospital, which is essentially the very best medical facility that the United States public sector has to offer. And the sort of surgery that Mr. Murtha was undergoing was not exactly experimental or cutting edge. That procedure has been practiced for close to twenty years. What this says to us is that even in facilities where medicine is practiced at the highest levels, no patient is immune from the dangers of surgical errors or medical malpractice.

It is extremely regrettable that Pennsylvania lost such a capable representative, and it is also unfortunate that Mr. Murtha’s children lost their father. But it should be mentioned that the families of everyday people who are victims of surgical errors and delayed or wrong medical diagnoses feel their losses just as keenly. And just as Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District will surely feel the financial impact of losing such an effective agent for their financial interests, regular Americans also find themselves in precarious financial situations when a husband or wife is taken from them due to the negligence or incompetence of a medical professional.  

If anything positive can be taken out of this tragedy, perhaps it will be that Representative Murtha’s colleagues might realize that placing arbitrary limits on compensation for the victims of medical malpractice is an unfair thing to do. These arbitrary limits (which are placed under the heading of what is called “Tort Reform”) create an artificial and often inaccurate financial limitation on the lives of human beings. They also prevent Americans from exercising their Constitutional rights to seek fair compensation for their damages.

Tort reform is one of the sticking points in the current health care legislation, as many Representatives believe that there should be a strict limit on exactly how much a human life is worth. Those aren’t the exact words that they use, but how else can you really describe these limits? In quite a few states, the compensation limit for medical malpractice victims is $200,000, no matter if the victim is a factory worker, or a teacher, or a Nobel Prize winner, or a Congressman for that matter.

Those who favor tort reform usually advance the idea that the reason these medical malpractice caps exist is because an abundance of lawsuits cause insurance rates to go up to unsustainable levels. There is no actual evidence to support this theory. The payouts for medical malpractice verdicts in 2008 were the lowest on record, and there has been no dramatic increase in the number of medical malpractice lawsuits over the past twenty years. Tort reform does not help doctors, hospitals or patients. The only people who benefit from tort reform are insurance companies, who are in no need of any financial safeguards whatsoever.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area.  A significant portion of our practice is dedicated to helping those who have been injured due to medical malpractice, and that includes medical errors, surgical errors and wrong diagnosis cases. We have helped malpractice injury victims in D.C, Northern Virginia and Maryland. John Sellinger, our medical malpractice attorney, is a  renowned litigator with a long and distinguished history of obtaining fair compensation for his clients. If you or a loved one has been injured due to a mistake by a doctor or surgeon, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

To learn more about John Sellinger, please read about John Sellinger, or watch his video on Youtube.
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Medical Malpractice Caps on Damages

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Paula Strand

Is A Monetary Cap In Medical Malpractice Fair?

It’s impossible to put a price tag on a crippling emotional loss. If someone walked up to you and offered you a sum of money in exchange for your infant son’s life, how much would be enough?

That’s an impossible question. The idea of putting a price tag on the life of a loved one is simply ridiculous.

But that didn’t stop Texas from doing so. Thanks to a ballot initiative that was voted into law back in 2003, the life of an infant is worth no more than $250,000. If a doctor prescribes a drug that puts a loved one in a coma, again, that’s worth no more than $250,000. If your wife dies on the operating table due to a preventable surgical error, that’s only worth $250,000.

$250,000 is the monetary cap that was placed on non-economic damages in medical malpractice verdicts. What that means is that the only thing you can be made whole for in Texas is something that would cost you money in the long run. For instance, if you make your living as a pilot and a surgeon makes a mistake that costs you your sight, you would be justified in suing the doctor for all the lost income that you would have made during the remainder of your career. But the emotional scarring and pain that you would have to go through in order to adjust to life without sight is, according to Texas law, only $250,000.

 

The example of the dead infant isn’t mere conjecture on our part. According to an investigative piece by Paul Adrian that was broadcast on a Fox TV affiliate in Dallas, a family from that area made the decision to take their infant son off of life support. The infant’s parents were convinced that a preventable medical error had been made which placed their child in that position, but due to the non-economic caps, the cost of bringing the case to court would have cost more than the damages they would have received. As awful as this sounds, it turns out that the only way that damages in a malpractice trial involving a dead baby can be taken seriously in Texas is if the baby was making money. The life altering pain of the parents counts for nothing.

What was the situation like in Texas where such absurd and draconian measures were actually voted into law by its own citizens? Were people whose injuries involved nothing more than stitches walking out of courtrooms with million dollar verdicts? Was the Texas judicial system nothing more than a free ATM machine for unethical people and their equally unethical attorneys? Was there an exodus of doctors from Texas, leaving the injured and sick to fend for themselves? Were the insurance companies bleeding money so badly over lawsuits that they had no choice but to raise their rates to astronomical proportions?

The answer depends on who you ask. If you ask insurance companies and their public relations teams, the answer is yes. If you ask a bipartisan group of college professors, the answer is no.

The piece on the Fox affiliate cites a study that provides 14 years worth of Texas malpractice data, including claims and payouts, through both settlements and verdicts. In this study,

“…The data present a picture of stability in most respects and moderate change in others. We do not find evidence in claim outcomes of the medical malpractice insurance crisis that produced headlines over the last several years and led to legal reform in Texas and other states. At least in Texas, the rapid rise in insurance premiums that sparked the crisis may reflect, in significant part, insurance market dynamics rather than changes in claim outcomes.…Controlling for population growth, the number of large paid claims (over $25,000 in real 1988 dollars) was roughly constant from 1990-2002. The number of smaller paid claims declined. Controlling for inflation, payout per large paid claim increased over 1988-2002 by an estimated 0.1% (insignificant) - 0.5% (marginally significant) per year, depending on the

dataset we use to define "medical malpractice" claims. Jury awards increased by an estimated

2.5% (insignificant) - 3.6% (barely significant) per year, depending on the dataset, but actual

post-verdict payouts in tried cases showed little or no time trend. Real defense costs per large

paid claim rose by 4.2-4.5% per year. Real total cost per large paid claim, including defense

costs, rose by 0.8-1.2% per year.”

In other words, according to the actual numbers, there wasn’t much to panic about in terms of medical malpractice lawsuits.

So why were groups like Texans for Lawsuit Reform claiming that the sky was falling? If there was no big leap in judgments or payouts or even malpractice claims, then why were the premium rates going through the roof?

According to Paul Adrian, the answer might be, ironically, tort reform.

In 1995, Governor George W. Bush enacted what were called “Tort Reform Rate Reductions,” which forced medical malpractice insurers to lower their rates over a period of five years. How significant were the overall rate reductions?

·         1996: $435.5 million in rate reductions

·         1997: $441.2 million in rate reductions

·         1998: $656.4 million in rate reductions

·         1999: $699.5 million in rate reductions

·         2000: $685.5 million in rate reductions

So between 1996 and 2000, the state of Texas enacted regulations that cost medical malpractice insurers a little under THREE BILLION DOLLARS in premiums. Once the five year period was up and the mandatory rate reductions were over, insurance companies were quite eager to make up their losses. Hence the skyrocketing rates.

Insurance companies needed both a fall guy and justification for the spike in premiums, and they found them in trial lawyers. They also needed any sort of legislative leg up that they could get in order to maximize their profits. Since the insurance companies weren’t comfortable with going through the very legislature that made them lower their rates in the first place, they did an end run around them and, with the help of tort reform organizations that they financed and PR firms that they hired, they managed to get Proposition 12 on the ballot. It was voted in to law in November of 2003, and as a result a case involving a dead baby can’t even get to court.

Tort reform organizations all over Texas and all over America are touting the results of these economic caps as the reason that Texas malpractice insurers were able to offer even lower rates to their doctors, as shown in an article in The Austin Business Journal:

“In recent months, the state's top medical malpractice insurance companies have trumped rate cuts. They're crediting the lower rates to Proposition 12, a constitutional amendment approved by Texas voters in September 2003. That amendment cemented the Legislature's decision that year to cap noneconomic medical malpractice damages at $250,000.”

The article also mentions that the Texas Medical Liability Trust will reduce its rates by 5%, while Americans Physician Insurance Exchange is cutting theirs by 13%. And why wouldn’t they? By all accounts insurers in Texas have been making money hand over fist. And the $250,000 cap on non-economic damages is a miniscule proportion of that money.

Remember that after the “Tort Reform Rate Reductions” in the late 90s, insurers raised their rates to astronomical levels, and although they lowered them a bit after Proposition 12 was voted into law, the rates were still incredibly high. We refer again to the remarkable piece by Paul Adrian:

“Insurance premiums did drop for Texas doctors. According to TDI, the state’s largest insurer of doctors, The Texas Medical Liability Trust, dropped its rates 31% between 2004 and 2008, but that's after the rates had jumped up 148 percent between 1999 and 2003.  Insurance rates have come down, but not by nearly as much as they had previously increased.”

For a real world analogy, the Texas Medical Liability Trust bragging about dropping its rates 31% is the equivalent of an 800 pound man losing about forty pounds and then putting out a press release proclaiming that he is “thin.”

To summarize, “Tort Reform Initiatives” cost insurers in Texas billions of dollars, so they spiked the rates and blamed the lawyers in order to recoup what they lost. After securing legal limitations to the rights of Texans, they lowered the rates just enough to appear magnanimous, but not really enough to bring them down to normal levels. They then made it seem that the reason that they could finally “afford” to bring the rates down was not because of the windfall profits that they have made over the past six years, but because of a ballot initiative that states that unless a Texan makes money, then that Texan isn’t worth anything.

It should be mentioned here that the term “emotional pain” does not exist to simply make people rich. It is rather an acknowledgement that incompetence and preventable mistakes can cause crippling emotional hardship. If you think that’s an exaggeration, try to imagine how Paul Pinsukanjana felt when he ordered his infant son taken off life support. Try to imagine how he felt when he discovered that, thanks to the laws of his own state, lawyers can’t even afford to accept his case. Try to imagine how he feels, living with the knowledge that there might be a doctor or nurse still at work at that same hospital who was directly responsible for his son’s death. Try to imagine how he feels, knowing that that same doctor or nurse can continue to practice, with no fear of any adverse consequences if another mistake is made.

As we said, it’s impossible to put a price tag on that kind of pain, but we think that $250,000 feels pretty cheap.

 

To learn more about medical malpractice law, please read our medical malpractice law home page.  To learn more about our medical malpractice lawyer, John Sellinger, read about John Sellinger, or watch the medical malpractice video by John Sellinger..
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Medical Malpractice - Perils of Anesthesia

Posted on January 12, 2009 by Paula Strand

Perils of Anesthesia.

Occasionally we read about medical errors and malpractice cases brought as a result of anesthesia errors. Despite the overall healthcare improvements and technical innovations, anesthesia errors still pervade our medical system.
Anesthesiology is a branch of medicine specializing in the use of drugs or other agents that cause insensibility to pain. While anesthetics are essential to conducting many medical procedures with little to no discomfort, they carry the risk of unwanted post-effects. Anesthesiology is also defined as a continuity of patient care involving preoperative evaluation, intraoperative and postoperative care. Most people think of anesthesia-related malpractice as it relates to surgery; however it can happen during pre-operative preparation, post-operatively in the recovery room, and in any procedure room in a medical facility or doctor’s office. Anesthesia mistakes can take place during childbirth and even before routine dental procedures. Anesthesia mistakes are not limited to anesthesiologists.

According to the American Society of Anesthesiologists , it is estimated that nearly 40 million anesthetics are administered each year in this country. Anesthesiologists provide or participate in more than 90 percent of these anesthetics. In the operating room, they are responsible for the medical management and anesthetic care of the patient throughout the duration of the surgery. The anesthesiologist must carefully match the anesthetic needs of each patient to that patient’s medical condition, responses to anesthesia and the requirements of the surgery. In many surgical settings, anesthesiologists work in the “anesthesia care team” mode, medically supervising the work of non-physician anesthetists such as nurse anesthetists and anesthesiologist assistants, who, although are not physicians, have been trained in the technical administration of anesthetics. Anesthesiologists have important functions outside of operating rooms, such as evaluating patients prior to surgery or conducting postoperative visits. However, the majority of their activities, which are performed inside the operating room, are seen by few people outside of the surgical and nursing team. Usually the patients are unable to remember the anesthesiologist’s involvement because much of the critical work may be done while the patient is anesthetized. The role of the anesthesiologist in the operating room is to: 1) provide continual medical assessment of the patient; 2) monitor and control the patient’s vital life functions; and 3) control the patient’s pain and level of consciousness to make conditions ideal for a safe and successful surgery.
 

Many healthcare professionals administer sedatives and anesthetics to their patients prior to procedures and surgeries. Administration of anesthesia requires specialized training and certification. The seriousness and number of complications increases significantly outside of the setting of the anesthesiologist in the operating room. Severe complications and death can occur in dental offices and cosmetic surgery clinics during procedures where patients are under general anesthesia and trained anesthesia staff are not present. Potential anesthesia medical malpractice defendants include anesthesiologists, nurses, nurse anesthetists, surgeons, dentists, and doctors.

Medical malpractice claims are common in anesthesiology, because problems are common. Anesthesia malpractice is usually devastating, often resulting in permanent injury, brain damage, and even death. As a result, medical indemnity premiums for anesthesiologists are usually higher than other specialties. Anesthesia medical malpractice accounts for a large number of medical malpractice cases across the country. A small error in dosage can have grave and potentially life-threatening consequences. According to the American Society of Anesthesiologists, as of 2007 there were 248 closed malpractice claims for events that occurred in the year 2000 or later. Among these 248 claims, malpractice insurance payment was made on behalf of the anesthesiologist in 108 claims or 44% of the claims, no payment was made in 134 claims or 54%. Payments ranged from $1,250 to $2 million with a median payment of $115,000. 96% of all payments were $1 million or less.

Unfortunately, proving negligence by an anesthesiologist or anesthesia staff is difficult because the plaintiff, at the time of the malpractice, was unconscious or sedated, and medical records are the only source of information in the case. Hospitals and out-patient clinics should always keep detailed anesthesia notes in a patient’s chart including a pre-anesthesia exam; informed consent form; operative record; transfer notes; physician notes and post-anesthesia record. Sometimes, after a tragic malpractice mistake, records get “lost” or altered. Only careful inspection of medical records can reveal post-mistake additions, omissions or alterations. John Sellinger, our medical malpractice lawyer who has been reading and interpreting medical records for thirty years, has gained immeasurable knowledge and skill when combing through medical records.  An altered or destroyed medical record offers the plaintiff’s side opportunities to prove malpractice or an attempt to hide the malpractice. Malpractice insurers and professional medical societies continuously warn medical practitioners to never alter medical records, but in the moments surrounding a potentially fatal mistake, professional and ethical advice can be forgotten.


 

To learn more about medical malpractice issues, please read medical malpractice.  TO learn mopre about our medical malpractice lawyer, John Sellinger, please read John Sellinger, or watch his medical malpractice video.
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