This week, it’s “Mission Accomplished” for private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. No silly, not actual military accomplishments. (Fool me twice, shame on me, right?) This has to do with what’s apparently the other mission of these private miliary contractors – to mistreat their workers.
This week, ProPublica reports that “private contractors injured while working for the U.S. government in Iraq and Afghanistan filed a class action lawsuit” against private contracting companies and their insurers for refusing their medical treatment and disability payments. They say that in order to boost profits, companies like insurers AIG and contractor KBR “routinely lied, cheated and threatened injured workers, while ignoring a federal law requiring compensation for such employees.” (See the earlier investigation by ProPublica, the Los Angeles Times and ABC’s 20/20).
Hundreds of thousands of civilians working for federal contractors have been deployed to war zones to deliver mail, cook meals and act as security guards for U.S. soldiers and diplomats. As of June 2011, more than 53,000 civilians have filed claims for injuries in the war zones. Almost 2,500 contract employees have been killed, according to figures kept by the Department of Labor, which oversees the system.
And speaking of KBR, this week a federal judge slammed KBR’s revolting attempt to force Jamie Leigh Jones to pay them $2 million in attorneys fees after Jamie failed to win her rape case against one of her KBR co-workers in Iraq. She lost even though she was unconscious (due to drugs or alchohol, what’s the difference?) during a sexual encounter that her alleged attacker says was “consensual.” (Sound familiar?) However, although the judge clearly didn’t want to do it, he was forced by statute to order her to pay KBR $150,000 in court costs. He stated in his order, “The fact that Jones presented prima facie claims of sexual harassment and hostile work environment highlights the impropriety of an award of attorneys’ fees in this case.” Of course, the hostile work environment for women at this company could hardly be more clear but the jury never heard about it. And you wonder why she lost?
So after assassinating her character and getting away with not having to defend itself for what they put Jamie and other women through (check out the film Hot Coffee for more about Jamie when the DVD comes out in November), KBR and its corporate lawyers now want her to pay them money. This is reprehensible on so many levels, but we like how Gawker put it:
Originally KBR had asked for $2 million from Jones, an IT worker whose claim stemmed from an incident that allegedly took place in Baghdad in 2005 (you can find the complaint here). But the presiding judge dropped attorneys fees from her bill, so now all she owes is $145,073.19—money she reportedly does not have, this being America. (I bet you $145,073 that KBR would quibble over the 19 cents.)...
[This is] the result of KBR taking advantage of its right under the federal Civil Rights Act to collect from Jones. However, the company could have decided against pursuing the costs (because they're already super-loaded), or possibly sought to recoup them from the government (because having taxpayers foot the bill for corporations is how we do business).
Guess what I am? Here’s a hint. I’m incompetent. I commit a lot of medical malpractice. Once, I lost my temper in the middle of a surgical procedure and stormed out of the room, leaving a bleeding patient on the table. A bunch of other times, I operated on people’s brains and they died or were seriously hurt. And then I make sure to skip town, ending up where no one holds me accountable.
So what am I?
I’m a doctor who practices in Texas, ‘er Sweden, I mean Texas, I mean Sweden, Texas, Sweden, Ugh … same difference!
The fabulous group Texas Watch has been closely following the case(s) of Dr. Stefan Konasiewicz, Texas brain surgeon.
In Dr. Konasiewicz’s former state, Minnesota, he was “one of five neurosurgeons in Minnesota disciplined by the [Minnesota Board of Medical Practice] and only the second neurosurgeon to be disciplined in Minnesota as a result of charges prompted by allegations of harming patients. … Citing four cases, including one in which a patient died, Konasiewicz was also disciplined by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice for ‘unprofessional and unethical conduct.’” Things were so bad that Wisconsin also restricted his license. But not Texas!
Dr. Konasiewicz made a bee line for that state, where in 2008 he joined the South Texas Brain and Spine Institute in Corpus Christi, which “took out an ad in the county medical society’s newsletter welcoming Konasiewicz.” Yet there was much more in Dr. Konasiewicz’s welcome wagon.
Apparently, Texas was so happy to have him operate on the brains of Texans that unlike Minnesota, which “ordered him to have some of his surgeries supervised by another neurosurgeon to continue to practice in the state … the Texas Medical Board has taken no such action against him, meaning his license is not restricted and he does not need to have his work supervised.”
And there’s more. While a bunch of Minnesota families sued Dr. Konasiewicz and his hospital for malpractice, settling six lawsuits for at least $3.2 million,
[I]in Texas, filing malpractice suits is rare. A study in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons found that since 2003, the year major tort reform laws were approved by voters and signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry, malpractice suits dropped 80 percent.
“It has become virtually impossible for most patients harmed by dangerous doctors to access the legal process and hold the physicians accountable,” said N. Alex Winslow, executive director of Texas Watch, a citizen advocacy organization. “Without a doubt, patients who are being harmed have little, if any, legal recourse at all.”
So what’s Sweden have to do with this? Well, turns out that in Sweden, like Texas, lawsuits for malpractice are also practically non-existent. Sweden has a so-called “no-fault” system because – unlike Texas - the country already takes care of their sick and injured. (Sweden’s general welfare pays for 80% of a victim’s sick leave and the healthcare system takes care of all medical expenses, so the Swedish “no-fault” system is considered “on top of” the general welfare system, not in place of it.) But at the same time, like all places where accountability (via litigation) is out the window, the country does little to hold bad doctors responsible and patient safety is badly suffering for it. As the Center for Justice & Democracy wrote in a recent study,
In 2007, Dr. Johanne Krogh, began practicing at Sweden’s Hudiksvall Hospital but before she came there, she was actually notorious in Norway for medical malpractice incidents. One incident in Norway involved Dr. Krogh losing her temper in the middle of a surgical procedure and storming out of the room, leaving a bleeding patient on the table. Her behavior was so egregious that the Norwegian patient insurance system paid 29 claims relating to her work, and received more than a dozen more. While Norway removed her orthopedic and surgical licenses after the first 20 payouts, nothing stopped her from moving to Sweden where she continued to practice as of 2010.
Texas and Sweden, the socialist paradise - virtual twins! Who knew?
By the way, Texas Watch has been closely following the horrendous record of their Governor Rick Perry, who created this tragic situation in Texas. Here’s their most recent report, which we give you with the proviso that ThePopTort takes absolutely no position on any candidate or race for office. We’re only dumping on the Governor cause of what he did to Texas. No gratuitous bashing or uncalled for mocking here. Ok maybe a little, but c’mon, this video is too funny.
Our legal system protects us all from injury and disease, whether or not we ever go to court. This is because the prospect of “tort” liability deters manufacturers, polluters, hospitals and other potential wrongdoers from repeating their negligent behavior and provides them with an economic incentive to make their practices safer. This phenomenon is not a fabrication invented by attorneys. It has been recognized and documented by everyone from conservative economists like Richard Posner, to Rand’s Institute for Civil Justice, to William L. Prosser, the father of modern tort law. (Just ask any first year law student.)
Imagine the amount of money the civil justice system actually saves the economy in terms of injuries and deaths that are prevented due to safer products and practices, wages not lost, health care expenses not incurred, and so on. Weakening the tort system with laws like "caps" on damages lessens this deterrence function, makes corporations more unsafe and costs us all more money. Pretty basic.
To say this message is often lost in the current political discourse about the tort system is a bit of an understatement. More like its been ground down, chewed up and spit out into something not quite recognizable anymore.
To wit, in Tennessee, a new law goes into effect this week that will "cap" damages and severely limit the legal accountability of nursing homes for abuse and neglect, which comes,
[J]ust a couple of years after the legislature in 2009 vastly reduced oversight of the 325 nursing homes in the state by eliminating regulations mandating that nursing home operators file detailed reports on adverse events affecting patients. Also eliminated were requirements that the state investigate those incidents. Officials said the change was needed so they could spend their time investigating more serious complaints.
Yeah right. According to the Tennessean newspaper,
A report issued this year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office gave the state Health Department failing scores for its performance in investigating serious complaints against nursing homes. It said there was a backlog of cases that had gone uninvestigated, and it cited a staff shortage as a factor.
Really, the last thing Tennessee should have done is block the critical last line of defense against unsafe nursing homes – the tort system. Yet that’s just what they did. The paper reports,
The new limits on lawsuits could shut down yet another avenue of complaints — the courtroom. Plaintiffs’ lawyers candidly admit that the new caps will keep many nursing home malpractice claims from ever getting to court, in part because lawyers will be less inclined to take the cases. … Tennessee nursing homes already rank near the bottom nationally in two key areas of care, according to federal data. Without the threat of lawsuits, some attorneys and advocates think, it will sink even lower.
Meanwhile, in another area of the country, Michael A. Cardozo, New York City’s corporation counsel, is calling for, among other things, “caps” on compensation for people killed or injured due to negligence in city hospitals and for other city misconduct - in order to save the city money.
As we’ve noted, the largest portions of total payouts against the city have always been for police misconduct and horrendous preventable injuries – brain damage, blindness, etc – due to negligence in city hospitals. Patient safety efforts in city hospitals remain abysmal and they promise to only get worse now that all hospitals in the state will no longer be accountable for causing brain damage in newborns. Why on earth would the city want to reduce payouts by cutting off people’s legal rights, further weakening the deterrence function of the tort system leading to even more unsafe hospitals, and to accompanying increases in cost and physician utilization inherent in caring for newly maimed patients?
And here’s the biggest irony. Reports the New York Times,
… Mr. Cardozo also pointed to the city’s own use of lawsuits to generate revenue, as well as defenses that have helped the city to protect its finances.
The city, for example, won a $104 million verdict against Exxon Mobil for allowing a gasoline additive to infect groundwater in Queens, Mr. Cardozo said. It also won $9.5 million from Amtrak for failing to reimburse the city for the cost of fixing two bridges, he said, and $8 million from the state for improperly charging the city for Medicaid expenditures.
The deterrence function of the tort system isn’t the only thing lost on Mr. Cardozo. His own hypocrisy seems lost as well.
There’s a large and uncomfortable amount of news this week about terror and torture victims trying to seek justice but not always ending up as they’d hoped.
The big US story is the wrongful death settlement by United Airlines and a security firm with the family of Mark Bavis, who was killed on 9/11 as a passenger on United Fl 175. “The family was the lone holdout among the thousands that either accepted money from the $7 billion Victim Compensation Fund or settled their lawsuits.” Read his brother Mike’s statement here, where he describes the devastating impact that federal preemption can have preventing litigants from getting answers in cases like this. Yet the family did make progress. He says,
Due to our family’s refusal to settle before this time, our attorneys at Motley Rice LLC have been able to conduct the most comprehensive investigation to date regarding how the airlines and airport security companies failed so miserably on 9/11 and in the days, weeks and months leading up to 9/11. Motley Rice’s attorneys have recovered ten times more information than the 9/11 Commission in regards to the failure of the aviation industry.
On a somewhat similar note in Britain, it was announced that the government will compensate relatives of victims of 1972’s tragic “Bloody Sunday,” when “British troops fired without warning on unarmed demonstrators” and then were exonerated “amid unfounded accusations that the troops had been attacked by Irish republican terrorists.” Fourteen people died that day, and 13 were wounded. But “one family immediately announced its intention to refuse any restitution, saying there were no circumstances under which they would ‘ever accept money’ for the loss of their brother William, 19. The idea of taking money from the Defense Ministry, they said, was ‘repulsive.’”
Meanwhile, there won’t be any justice anytime soon for the Abu Ghraib prison victims, again thanks to federal preemption. On Wednesday, the U.S. appeals court in Virginia dismissed lawsuits "claiming employees of two defense contractors conspired to torture and abuse Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and at other locations. … One lawsuit was filed by 72 Iraqis while the other was brought by four Iraqis.” Unfortunately, the court said the claims were pre-empted by U.S. national security and foreign policy law.
On the “suits recently filed” side of the ledger, Ernesto Zedillo, who was president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000, may have a bit of a problem at his new job teaching international studies at Yale as director of its Center for the Study of Globalization.
The Associated Pressreports that Zedillo “has been sued in Connecticut for alleged crimes against humanity in connection with the 1997 killings of 45 people in a Mexican village, a lawsuit that he called slanderous.” The lawsuit says that “Zedillo was responsible for the massacre by paramilitary groups in the village of Acteal, in the southern state of Chiapas, and tried to cover up the killings. The plaintiffs, who include people injured in the attack and relatives of some of the dead, are seeking total damages in the millions of dollars, one of their lawyers said.”
The case was “filed under the federal Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows people alleging violations of international law to sue in the United States, and the Torture Victims Protection Act, which permits damages for torture and illegal killings abroad.”
There are also reports that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been sued for $10 billion in a class action lawsuit for “terror and torture ... on behalf of an Iranian woman living in Los Angeles whose brother was tortured to death by the regime of Muslim leaders in Iran." Ahmadinejad apparently isn’t responding and “a default judgment would be the next step in the case, which was brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991.”
Two incarceration stories have lots of people on edge today. First comes breaking news that the two U.S. hikers - Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer – who have been locked up in Tehran’s Evin prison, have finally been released. At the same time, everyone from “a former FBI director, former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI” to European lawmakers are urging that the execution of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis be stopped, since he’s likely innocent. He's set to die tonight.
So in terms of incarceration news items, the following story may get a little buried.
You may not know this, but we have been privatizing our prison systems for years now. When prisons are privatized, they are run for a profit. You can imagine the results. Actually, no imagination is needed.
One of the biggest players in prison privatization biz is the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), an innocuous-sounding company which describes itself as “the nation’s leading provider of correctional solutions to federal, state and local government” and which boasts of, among other things, “rehabilitating inmates, giving back to communities, and bringing innovative security to government corrections – all while consistently saving hardworking taxpayers’ dollars.”
CCA just settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of inmates at one of CCA’s Idaho prisons, the notorious Idaho Correctional Center. Apparently, this prison,
[W]as so violent it was dubbed “Gladiator School,” and that guards used inmate-on-inmate violence as a management tool and then denied prisoners medical care as a way to cover up the assaults. … “The unnecessary carnage and suffering that has resulted is shameful and inexcusable,” the ACLU wrote in the lawsuit. “ICC not only condones prisoner violence, the entrenched culture of ICC promotes, facilitates, and encourages it.”
CCA denies this, but that denial only goes so far since “the agreement is governed under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which only applies in cases in which prisoners' Constitutional rights have been violated.” CCA has agreed to do better, make improvements and face more litigation if they don’t. If that happens, maybe CCA should consider relocating. I’m sure the Iranian prison system could use their expertise.
In 2010 things were looking good in New York, at least for our drinking water. Here at ThePopTort we consider ourselves big fans of safe drinking water. In fact, we prefer tap water to environmentally damaging bottled water. Thus, we were thrilled when the New York State imposed a temporary moratorium on a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing (better known as fracking) in horizontal wells. In fact, we hoped New York would become the first state to ban the practice!
So imagine how aghast we were back in June when we heard that, rather than banning the risky practice altogether, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo planned to lift the current moratorium and open New York up to fracking.
If you haven’t seen the documentary Gasland and you haven’t seen any of the youtube videos where homeowners light their tap water on fire, you might not know what fracking is.
“fracking is a dangerous way of getting oil and gas and a shortsighted energy strategy. It’s poisoning our air and water and on its way to jeopardizing the health of millions more Americans.”
“The process of fracking means injecting millions of gallons of water, chemicals and sand into shale rock formations at high pressures to break open the rock and release the gas. There are numerous cases of water contamination near fracking sites. Fracking also produces a toxic wastewater that cannot be treated by standard treatment plants. It is especially dangerous because drillers are rushing to use the technique in new areas of the country without fully evaluating the effects on human health and environment, and without adequate government oversight.”
Not surprisingly, Halliburton - the same oil and gas company that profited from the Iraq War - is now making money blasting massive amounts of chemicals into underground rock formations and those chemicals, 29 of which are known or possible carcinogens or otherwise dangerous to humans, have the potential of ending up in your ground water and ultimately your drinking glass.
And, now, thanks to Halliburton, we don’t even have the Environmental Protection Agency or the Safe Drinking Water Act to protect us. In 2005, then Vice President Dick Cheney – remember him – former chief executive of Halliburton, inserted something known as the Halliburton loophole into the 2005 energy bill. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a loophole for Halliburton can’t be good for the rest of us. It took away the EPA’s authority to regulate fracking and removed fracking entirely from the Safe Drinking Water Act. So right now, there’s no government oversight of the process at all.
Not long after Governor Cuomo let New Yorkers know that he’d be putting our drinking water at risk, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation released a 1547 page document outlining the state’s guidelines on fracking. It can be found here. New Yorkers now have 90 days, until mid-December, to read and comment on the report. Environmental groups are already protesting this, claiming that 90 days is hardly enough time!
But it’s not just environmental groups and civil justice groups, like us, that are concerned. Last week, 59 scientists from around the world sent a letter to Governor Cuomo voicing their own concerns – that New York’s infrastructure can’t handle fracking and that, if it’s allowed, toxic chemicals are going to end up poisoning our water. These scientists come from prestigious universities and institutes in 18 states and seven foreign counties and they’re concerned that if we start fracking, there’s no way to adequately protect New Yorkers’ drinking water from contamination!
As the Environmental Advocates of New York summed up, in the following statement:
“Governor Cuomo and the Department of Environmental Conservation should take heed when independent physicians, engineers and experts tell you that the science doesn’t back up the state’s proposal to guide hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking.’
These scientists are saying what New Yorkers have known all along. If New York’s water is contaminated by fracking fluids our drinking water is at risk, and our filtration systems cannot protect us.”
But here’s the crazy thing. Along with scientists and environmental groups, the very state government that seeks to allow fracking is also concerned about potential environmental disasters it will cause! That’s right. New York’s own Comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli is so concerned about potential problems that he wants to set up a statewide fund that would pay to clean up the environmental damage occuring as the result of fracking. Drillers would pay into his fund rather than face liability - or accountability - later on. While it is unclear whether or not this state fund would be deemed an exclusive remedy for people harmed by fracking, preventing New Yorkers from bringing lawsuits altogether, it is clear that this would limit lawsuits and potentially let some oil and gas companies off the hook for their own negligence!
In other words, lets say you’re a homeowner who gets sick because fracking contaminates your drinking water. Ordinarily you could hire an attorney and sue the gas company that caused the contamination. This is what’s currently happening in other states like Pennsylvania and Texas. DiNapoli, however, believes that a statewide fund is preferable to lawsuits because a lawsuit “could be costly and time consuming because it is a private right of action.” As he explains, “We don’t really know how many accidents or incidents are happening right now with natural gas drilling.” Incidents might be so prevalent, in other words, we shouldn’t bother holding companies accountable.
We’re hoping that Governor Cuomo listens to the 59 scientists from around the world. Otherwise pretty soon we might be advising you to steer clear your kitchen sink!
UPDATE:
This morning (9/20/2011), ThePopTort received a phone call from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office. They read our post on fracking yesterday, and wanted to clarify their Proposal for a Natural Gas Damage Recovery Fund.
We are happy to report that while the proposal would create a fund that is strictly liable to pay for damages and empowers the State Attorney General to recover costs from oil and gas companies, it WOULD NOT prevent New Yorkers from suing responsible oil and gas companies for damages. In other words, it is not an exclusive remedy and does not take away the right to a private cause of action. Additionally, the fund would ensure timely clean up of dangerous contamination and create strict liability for oil and gas companies that cause the contamination.
We’re glad that the Comptroller’s office is committed to working with New Yorkers and ensuring that any oil and gas companies that cause dangerous contamination and other environmental disasters are held accountable!
I don’t think it is a stretch to say that paint companies intentionally poisoned children. They knew as early as 1912 that lead paint caused brain damage in babies and children, yet through the Mad Men years, they marketed this paint specifically for use in nurseries, and directed advertisements at babies and children. As we’ve noted before, most of these companies still exist in some form and continue to profit from their past misdeeds.
Sally, Bobby and baby Gene Draper may not epitomize the demographic of kids who ate a lot of lead-based paint chips back in the day, although it’s doubtful their parents would have cared much given their support for playthings like plastic dry-cleaning bags (as long as the dry clearing was safe!). But also, in the 1950s and 1960s, many families had no idea that lead paint did this to children - thanks to a massive paint industry cover-up.
In fact, it took another decade for the U.S. to finally ban lead paint for residential use in 1978. After that, no child should have been knowingly exposed to it – especially by a medical facility of all things. We expect that to be mostly true, except if you were a poor child in Baltimore, apparently.
As reported today in the New York Times, a class action was filed yesterday against the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore,
[A]ccusing it of knowingly exposing black children as young as a year old to lead poisoning in the 1990s as part of a study exploring the hazards of lead paint. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that more than 100 children [ages 12 months to 5 years] were endangered by high levels of lead dust in their homes despite assurances from the Kennedy Krieger Institute that the houses were “lead safe.”
“Children were enticed into living in lead-tainted housing and subjected to a research program which intentionally exposed them to lead poisoning in order for the extent of the contamination of these children’s blood to be used by scientific researchers to assess the success of lead paint or lead dust abatement measures,” said the suit, filed in state court in Baltimore. “Nothing about the research was designed to treat the subject children for lead poisoning.”
Kennedy Krieger Institute, by the way, says that the research, started in 1993 and lasting 6 years, “was conducted in the best interest of all of the children enrolled.”
The suit says, “The hospital used these children as known guinea pigs in these contaminated houses to complete this study … For this study, KKI selected children and their parents who were predominantly from a lower economic strata and minorities." Moreover, this isn't the first lawsuit connected to this shameful research experiment.
Earlier lawsuits were heard by the Court of Appeals, which ruled that the legal actions could go forward. In its 2001 decision, the court found the researchers failed to warn families that their children faced a health risk if they continued to live in the homes. The court also found that the researchers did not inform the families of the youngsters' elevated blood-lead levels in a timely manner. Some of the cases were settled confidentially.
Unfortunately, the paint industry’s sordid past isn’t grounds for justice for every family. In Mississippi last week, the Supreme Court overturned a $7 million jury verdict “against the Sherwin-Williams Co., which had argued it was not liable for the illnesses of a boy who might have eaten lead-contaminated paint chips.”
Gosh, the news has been grim lately. There are shocking levels of poverty in this country and it is only getting worse. SAT reading scores have fallen to the lowest level on record. Some people cheer at the notion that someone without health insurance should be left to die. Economist Paul Krugman tells Steven Colbert that our economy is “functionally like the Depression.”
Actually, I think it’s more like our brains are functionally in a depression. I know some people are thinking that a few Tanqueray martinis might be in order but I just heard about a better, healthier solution: just laugh! Who knew?
There is a new study out about how “the physical act of laughing” itself makes us feel good. Writes the New York Times, “The simple muscular exertions involved in producing the familiar ha, ha, ha … trigger an increase in endorphins, the brain chemicals known for their feel-good effect.”
We do our best at ThePopTort to find humor in a pretty dry topic – the tort system. Bor-ing! So we at least try to mock sanctimonious hypocrites whenever we can.
For example, well-know chemical company Dupont has made no secret of the fact that they dislike being sued or paying punitive damages for causing environmental disasters, which Greenpeace says “continue to jeopardize the lives of about 9 million Americans.” For example, in 2008 we reported that Dupont would be heading straight to the appeals court to challenge a judge’s ruling that Dupont had engaged in:
wanton, willful and reckless conduct in its operation of the [zinc] smelter in the small town of Spelter, [West Virginia]...Among other things, DuPont was ordered to pay $196.2 million in punitive damages to residents who claimed the company downplayed and lied about health threats from arsenic, cadmium and lead in the air, water and soil for decades.
The company has also made it part of its political mission to push for laws that cut off the legal rights of everyday Americans. For example, they are a member of the disturbing corporate coalition called the New Jersey Lawsuit Reform Alliance, whose sole mission is to eviscerate the legal rights of New Jersey residents.
But today, this company took a little break from fighting jury verdicts and went ahead and got one for itself. In fact, some might even call it an eye-popping verdict - more than $919 million - after it sued a South Korea company for one of those life-or-death trade secret violations involving a Dupont fiber. It’s the third-largest jury verdict on record for this entire year, yet still not enough for this profiteering company. Now they want punitive damages too!
If hypocrisy like this makes you laugh, we are happy to have helped you today. If not, well, there’s always Charlie Bit My Finger.
The nation's poverty rate increased to 15.1 percent in 2010, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 and the highest level since 1993, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's annual Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage report for 2010. An additional 2.6 million people landed in poverty last year, bringing the total to 46.2 million -- the highest number since the government started tracking poverty in the 1950s.
"Income down, poverty up, health insurance coverage down or flat," said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in a statement. "The news on economic well-being in the U.S. is not good. Worse, children’s poverty increased for the fourth year in a row and at 22 percent is the highest since 1993. Child poverty has been higher than the 2010 level in only three years since the mid-1960s."
This is bad enough. But to be defined as poor in this country, you need to be a family of four with annual earnings of less than $22,314. I'm guessing there are lots more poor people than this.
In 2007, U.S. income inequality hit its highest mark since just ahead of the Great Depression in 1929. And that was before the current recession brought joblessness and financial peril to scores of Americans, most of whom are on the wrong side of the wealth divide. … "We have this growing elite that makes the economy of the United States look more like a banana republic than an economic democracy," says Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.
(She’s not talking about the clothing store with its limited edition Man Men collection.) But speaking of mad men, hey insurance execs you can start reading now. You'll love this! According to a new Center for Justice & Democracy fact sheet,
As the insurance industry pushes for laws that deprive sick and injured Americans of their right to be fairly compensated for harm caused by corporate wrongdoing, insurance executives continue to collect millions of dollars in compensation. A recent study in the July 2011 edition of the Insurance Forum shows that insurance executives were collectively paid hundreds of millions of dollars in 2010.
For example, according to the SEC, “114 insurance executives received compensation of $5 million or more in 2010, with 30 receiving $10 million or above.”
Look, this is nothing against doctors. We all love our doctors (except the bad or obnoxious ones, or the ones on the take from the drug industry), and we want them to do good work because, well, our lives depend on it. But honestly, the complaining that goes on about their malpractice insurance premiums!
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the top 10 earning occupations in this country, nine are doctors and dentists (ok, I'm counting podiatrists in that.) (And no, consumer advocates don’t make the top 10. Nor do lawyers, by the way.) But that’s not all. According to a new study published in Health Affairs, being a U.S. physician these days is about as close to hitting the international professional jackpot as winning big at the Monte Carlo crap tables.
“American primary care and orthopedic physicians are paid more for each service than are their counterparts in Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom,” said the study, by Sherry A. Glied, an assistant secretary of health and human services, and Miriam J. Laugesen, an assistant professor of health policy at Columbia.
The study, being published Thursday in the journal Health Affairs, found that the incomes of primary care doctors and orthopedic surgeons were substantially higher in the United States than in other countries. Moreover, it said, the difference results mainly from higher fees, not from higher costs of the doctors’ medical practice, a larger number or volume of services or higher medical school tuition.
Also, “Medical students often cite higher pay as a reason for choosing to become specialists.” For example, “’Among orthopedic surgeons, those who had the highest annual pretax incomes, net of expenses, were in the United States,’” with an average of $442,450, the study said.” So this is interesting. Because of the way insurers rates doctors – by specialty, not by experience – specialists like orthopedic surgeons automatically pay more for malpractice insurance. But rather than running away from these kinds of specialties, med students are heading straight for them! That’s how much money they’re gonna make.
Nor should malpractice premiums be an issue for any physician right now. Malpractice premiums rate hikes are cyclical for reasons having nothing to do with claims or payouts or a state’s particularly “tort” laws. (That means you too, Texas.) And we’ve been in an extended “soft market” (stable/low rates) for awhile now. But don’t just take our word for it. Check out this article from Modern Medicine magazine:
Under increasing pressure from third-party payers and facing the uncertainty of healthcare reform, physicians have been able to find some comfort in stable or, in some cases, declining medical liability premiums.
The years-long pattern of plateaued premiums continues, according to Medical Economics' 2010 Exclusive Survey on malpractice, part of our Continuing Study that also examined earnings (September 24 issue) and productivity (October 22 issue).
So pull yourselves together and stop all that crying, Doctor Doctor Mr. Md. Things could be worse. You could be anywhere else in the world, where patients don’t have to pay to see you.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the authors only. Any disputes should be addressed to the authors or commentators. The Pop Tort invites comment to further the debate on issues addressed, but we reserve the right to deny or remove any post or comment.
