Physicians have lost their minds

[Whiskeytide]

99. That is a shameless right wing talking point.

The "Stella Awards" and other such absurd "outrageous lawsuit" memes are fake. http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp. And note that even the list of real outrageous lawsuits collected by Snopes in it's article all resulted in dismissals of the silly claims. That is overwhelmingly the rule.

While you can always find anecdotal examples of abuse of the legal system, it has and hopefully will remain one of the most valuable tools of a free society. There is a very good reason the republicans support draconian tort reform measures - because corporate interests loathe lawyers and the ability of lawsuits (and damage awards) to restrict corporate conduct. It's also no mystery why authoritarian regimes often act to cripple or abolish the legal profession as one of the first items of business after assuming power.

And the citations you provide in your post below only reaffirm what I'm saying. All of those legislative Acts and precedents - in one way or another - require the plaintiff to prove that the physician acted negligently and outside the scope of reasonable medical practice. In other words, you don't just recover a bag of money because you become addicted to opiates under your doctor's care. You have to PROVE the doctor prescribed the medicine to you improperly. That's a pretty tough - and fair - standard.

Frankly, what I'm seeing in my practice is that pharmaceutical companies are paying physicians truckloads of money and other benefits to Rx their drugs. So what would you prefer? Laws against negligently prescribing pain meds that may sometimes result in an occasional bullshit lawsuit, or the absence of such laws enabling your physician to Rx you a highly addictive Fentanyl nasal spray 100 times more potent than heroine because the mfr pays him/her $20,000 a month in "speaking" fees.