It’s difficult to believe that our once most-highly compensated professionals are now struggling to make ends meet. Doctors are leaving the profession to go into something, anything that is profitable.
Last week a group of West Virginia doctors asked me to weigh in on a statewide debate: Should a doctor treat a patient – if doing so can bring about the doctor’s financial ruin?
Good question. One angry doctor said he, would simply allow a local malpractice lawyer die, rather than risk treating him! He didn’t want to “save the dragon that would later eat him alive.”
I don’t think he was thinking of his Hippocatic oath.
We’ve all heard of the physician’s oath. It was written by the Greek doctor Hippocrates 460 years before Christ. I’ve discovered that very few of us can recite it. (A doctor must recite it only once.)
“You do solemnly swear, each by whatever you hold most sacred:
That you will be loyal to the Profession of Medicine, and just and generous to its members. That you will lead your lives and practice your art in uprightness and honor. That into whatsoever house you shall enter, it shall be for the good of the sick to the utmost of your power, your holding yourselves far aloof from wrong, from corruption, from the tempting of others to vice.That you will exercise your art solely for the cure of your patients, and will give no drug, perform no operation, for a criminal purpose, even if solicited, far less suggest it. (Hippocrates included “you will perform no abortions”. This part was taken out a few years ago.)
That whatsoever you shall see or hear of the lives of men or women which is not fitting to be spoken, you will keep inviolably secret. These things do you swear. Let each bow the head in sign of acquiescence And now, if you will be true to this, your oath, may prosperity and good repute be ever yours; the opposite, if you shall prove yourselves forsworn.
To this, your oath, may prosperity and good repute be ever yours.”
Wow! What a great oath! Before Hippocrates came along, doctors were not well thought of. In fact, they were mostly looked down on as flim-flam artists. Hippocrates helped elevate the stature of doctors by helping doctors see themselves as professionals, as benefactors to humanity.
Do you remember the old phrase “Is there a doctor in the house?” This plea was delivered to audiences in thousands of theatres over the centuries. If there were a doctor present, he would come forward to administer first-aid. Lives were saved by his heroic service.
Did the doctor charge a fee for the above kindness? Not that I know of. It was a totally selfless act of mercy. But according to several doctors who wrote to me, when a doctor now hears “Is there a doctor in the house?” – he hesitates to come forward. What he hears is “Would you please expose your throat so that it can be cut in a malpractice suit?” Several states have even passed “Good Samaritan” legislation to hold doctors innocent if the patient sues.
I have friends and family in Pennsylvania, and their lives are in jeopardy. Doctors are leaving the state because they can no longer afford to pay for medical malpractice insurance, and they cannot afford financial ruin without it. Some obstetricians are paying malpractice premiums in excess of $200,000 per year!
We have a system that has reached crisis proportions. If you don’t believe it’s a crisis, you will when you are dying without medical help. You will when a new disease is destroying humanity because medicine research was halted.
Perhaps you already don’t like to see $15 of your $50 medical bill go to pay malpractice insurance premiums. Or doctors turning you away because you are a Medicaid or Medicare patient, and they cannot recover the cost of treating you.
Two men have ideas on fixing the system. President Bush suggests that malpractice jury awards be limited to:
The actual cost to the victim, plus $250,000 ‘pain and suffering’. For instance, a victim would receive $1 million for medical costs and lost income, and $250,000 pain and suffering. The total award would be $1,250,000.
The President feels that the $10 million to $100 million ‘pain and suffering’ awards are unrealistic and are bankrupting the medical profession. President Bush does not believe the attorneys who collect 30% of each huge award will try to limit awards.
Senator John Edwards of North Carolina is a malpractice lawyer who became quite wealthy under the present system. He says we do not need to fix this system, but simply limit the amount insurance companies can charge for malpractice coverage.
As a businessman, I don’t see Edwards’ solution working. If an insurance company’s premiums are limited, but its payouts are unlimited, there will soon be no coverage because there will be no insurance carriers. And there will be no doctors who can risk treating patients. The malpractice lawyers will find other victims, and the rest of us will have to do our own doctoring.
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© 2008 by George V. Caylor. All rights reserved.
The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.
(Ecclesiastes 10:2)
