ThePopTort

A Child’s Not-So-Fun Obstacle Course

Read some of these news stories today, and tell me that kids don’t deserve better than this:

The Minnesota Department of Health may be improperly keeping the blood newborns without the written consent of parents and turning that blood over to research.  Ugh.

Johnson & Johnson has finally agreed to remove cancer-causing chemicals from its baby products, like Johnson's Baby Shampoo, which contains formaldehyde-releasing chemicals. We should be happy about this result since the company still doesn’t admit there’s any problem subjecting babies to formaldehyde in its shampoo – as safe as “eating an apple or pear,” they say.  And they want to be sure you know that “the commitment to remove chemicals of concern does not apply to Johnson & Johnson's adult products such as those in the Aveeno or Neutrogena lines.”  In addition, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics notes that “several other top children's bath products — made by Huggies, L'Oreal, Grins & Giggles, Baby Magic, Sesame Street, CVS and others— also contain formaldehyde-releasing preservatives as well chemicals associated with 1,4 dioxane.”  Read more here.

Moving onto toys, Reuters writes:

A Power Rangers "samurai mega blade" and a Godzilla figure with dagger-like attachments are some of the most dangerous toys lurking in stores this holiday season, according to a consumer watchdog group.

Boston-based World Against Toys Causing Harm (WATCH) on Wednesday issued its annual list of the 10 worst children's toys, just in time for the shopping frenzy that typically starts in late November.

On the list were items the group said pose risks for choking, electrocution, puncture wounds and more. 

Like J&J I guess, the Toy Industry Association thinks we are all overreacting, and that reports of toy hazards like this “needlessly frighten parents.”

As for kids' clothes, it was just announced that “About 45,000 KEDS 'Know It All' girls' shoes distributed by Collective Brands Inc. are being voluntarily recalled after more than two dozen users received cuts and scratches from parts that came loose.”

And last but not least - schools. In Los Angeles, the City Council just voted to settle a lawsuit brought by the Los Angeles Unified School District because “soil underneath a high school campus in Glassell Park was contaminated by chemicals that originated at a nearby city-owned property.”  

In their lawsuit, district officials said industrial solvents and other hazardous substances had been found in soil at one end of the campus — and fingered land owned by the Bureau of Sanitation as the culprit.

We shouldn't have to worry about stuff like this.

Doctors Who Sue

Doctors, you may be interested to know, are running to court like crazy these days, and who could blame them?

For example, last week the American College of Emergency Physicians (i.e., ER docs), supported by the Washington State Hospital Association, the Washington State Medical Association and the Washington Chapter of the Academy of Emergency Physicians, filed a lawsuit in Washington State to challenge that state’s new Medicaid rules, which limit Medicaid patients – i.e., the poor - to three “non-emergency” visits to the ER each year.  And that’s not all these rules do.  In order to make double sure these struggling families don’t frequent the ER too much, they’ve created a special definition - just for them - of what’s an emergency.  Here is what’s no-longer considered an emergency if you’re a Medicaid patient in Washington State: difficulty breathing, miscarriage, abdominal pains, and chest pains.  In other words, if you think you’re having a heart attack, get an appointment with your primary care doctor.  (Talk about “death panels.”)  In fact, over 700 diagnoses that used to be emergencies are now considered “non-emergent.”  

Then yesterday, the U.S. Supreme heard a case brought by doctors, health care providers and patients, challenging the state of California’s decision to cut reimbursement rates to doctors who treat Medicaid patients, and doing so without getting the federal government’s approval like they’re supposed to.  NPR’s Nina Totenberg described the case this way:

In 2008 and 2009, California cut [Medicaid reimbursement] fees by up to 10 percent, and the cuts went into effect without being submitted to the federal Medicaid agency for approval as required by law. Health care providers went to court, contending that the cuts were solely for budgetary purposes and did not meet the federal requirements for balancing money issues and access to health care. On the steps of the Supreme Court on Monday, California Medical Association doctors said they simply can't afford to take care of substantial numbers of Medicaid patients when fees are so low.

The problem is that they may not have a right to bring a lawsuit at all.  That's even according to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Imagine not being able to bring a lawsuit in a situation like this, when doctors have clearly been wronged, and when the poor are going to suffer for it, right? 

If only the ER docs saw the same value helping poor folks get proper treatment like this as helping some of those same patients who are negligently injured.  For example, last November, we wrote about Florida legislation that would give ER doctors who treat Medicaid patients "sovereign immunity," and cap their liability for committing medical negligence against the poor at $100,000. 

For three decades, doctors and medical societies have pursued a relentless campaign to severely limit compensation for injured patients.  Yet when a managed care company or the government treats doctors unfairly, they head straight to court – in fact, to the U.S. Supreme Court.  This should be their right.  It should be patients’ rights, too.

The Object of Our Medical Errors

It’s one thing to leave a hospital with more problems than you thought you had going in but this is ridiculous.

In New York hospitals in 2009, there were 95 cases of “foreign objects” left-behind in patients – and what’s worse, this is 11 more cases than the prior year.  According to a report by the Buffalo-based Niagara Health Quality Coalition, “wires, sponges and instruments continue to be a post-surgery problem for hospitals -- not to mention patients.”  For example, in one Albany-based hospital,

During an emergency Caesarean section, the wire to a fetal scalp probe was inadvertently cut. Staff knew the wire was missing but didn't believe it was inside the mother when the doctor closed the C-section incision. An X-ray revealed the wire was inside the patient and it was removed.

(New York, you may recall from our earlier coverage, passed a law this year that will result in essentially no legal accountability for a hospital’s unsafe emergency obstetrical care when negligence results in the birth of a brain-damaged child.  Way to go, New York!)

Now let’s jump coasts to California, a state which severely limits the accountability of hospitals in all malpractice cases and whose patient safety record already should send shivers up anyone’s spine.  There,

State public health officials have fined 12 California hospitals for medical errors that hurt or killed patients … The penalties were issued for errors such as leaving foreign objects in patient’s bodies during surgery and administrating the wrong medication. The fines, which hospitals can appeal, range from $50,000 to $75,000. “Most of these are preventable medical errors,” said Ralph Montano, spokesman for the California Department of Public Health. “Either someone was harmed or killed or likely to be harmed.”  Since 2007 the department has issued 198 penalties to 124 hospitals and had collected $4.6 million in fines.

For example,

At Torrance Memorial Medical Center, surgical staff left a bottle of lens defogging solution inside a patient during an operation to remove a kidney, according to the report. The bottle wasn’t discovered until the patient returned to the medical center for another operation.

And all this reminds us that an even more severe cap on damages exists in Nebraska, and you’ll find no better portrayal of the impact of this cap than in the documentary film, Hot Coffee. If you have HBO and haven’t yet seen the film, you still have time – but not much. The film is available On Demand only until September 11!  Please don’t miss it!

The Metrolink Case and the Agony of Caps

We’ve written enough about how caps on damages cause anguish and despair for victims (here, here).  But until today, I think we’ve never really understood the agony of caps for judges who are forced to apply them. 

In LA on September 12, 2008, 25 people died and 135 were injured, some severely, in a horrific train collision, which “hurled passengers aboard Metrolink No. 111 through three cars.” 

The cause was Robert Sanchez, “a contract engineer for Metrolink who ran a red signal while sending a text message to a teenage train buff.”  He was employed by former Metrolink contract operator Connex, a subsidiary of Veolia Environment, a French conglomerate.

A decade earlier, Congress struck a deal to bail out Amtrak, setting a $200 million overall liability cap for all rail accidents - not just Amtrak's - no matter how horrific the crash, reckless the rail company or people  killed or injured.  The law says, “(2) The aggregate allowable awards to all rail passengers, against all defendants, for all claims, including claims for punitive damages, arising from a single accident or incident, shall not exceed $200,000,000.”

When the crash occurred, people immediately knew that the need for compensation for these victims would far exceed this $200 million cap.  But of course, Congress did nothing at all to help and the result is, once again, horrible anguish for the victims.  In addition, we now see clearly the agony for the judge who was forced to apply this cap - a judge who would have awarded $264 million based on the evidence presented in these cases (victims had collectively sought $350 million).

Because of the cap, said Superior Court Judge Peter D. Lichtman in a 33-page ruling, "There is not enough money to compensate the victims for future medical care and past pain and suffering,"  So, he said,

"Impossible decisions had to be made … What was given to one victim had to be taken from another.

"Essentially, a `Sophie's Choice' had to be made on a daily basis. One `Sophie's Choice' is enough for a lifetime, but over 120 of them defies description."

The LA Times put it this way:

Who is more deserving of a $1-million compensation award, a woman whose organs were crushed when a train table "guillotined" her abdomen during the Metrolink crash three years ago or the man who has physically healed but whose depression and anger have cost him his job, marriage and sound mind?

The judge awarded the most he could to Racheal Mofya: 

Racheal was a Zambian exchange student who was studying fashion, had been accepted into medical school at the time of the crash. But when she was catapulted across the first Metrolink car, she suffered a fractured skull, massive brain damage and other disfiguring injuries.

Now she can barely walk and lives with a sister in Minnesota. She hopes to move to an assisted-living home.

While her attorney requested $18 million, Lichtman awarded her $9 million, the highest of any victim.

"She'll never hold a job," said Michael McQueen, her Camarillo- based lawyer. "And the tragedy is, all she knows is she got on a train.

"From a vivacious, energetic, joyful person to a confused (and) frightened girl."

Here’s more from the LA Times:

Families who lost children, like the parents of 19-year-old Cal State Northridge student Aida Magdaleno, will receive on average $1.2 million when the payouts are available in about two months.

Juan Magdaleno, the victim's brother, said the families were aware of the constraints on Lichtman in dividing up the compensation fund but are angered by the federal cap that he says disrespects accident victims.

"Aida's life and the lives of others weren't for sale. Their lives didn't have a price until the accident. And with the cap, the more people die, the less their lives were worth," said an incredulous Magdaleno, who also criticized Metrolink and its operators for dragging their feet on recommended safety improvements to avert other collisions. "There's nothing that will bring my sister back, but one of the things we want in her memory is for change to occur."

Members of Congress and attorneys in the case have tried to shame Veolia into paying what they owe these victims, “much like British Petroleum exceeded its $75 million cap for the Gulf oil spill by billions.”   (For more on BP and oil industry caps, see here.)

U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, called for Veolia to "end Sophie's Choices," referring to the choice between two equally unbearable options.

"Now that Judge Lichtman has made his ruling, I once again call upon Veolia to do the right thing and fairly compensate the victims," Gallegly said in a statement. "The company was grossly negligent."  …

Veolia, however, has steadfastly declined to pay more than the $200 million limit.

Imagine, a company with less decency than BP.

Comparing States on the State of Patient Safety

It’s June, so it must be time for another patient safety study!  Actually, it could be March or August or December.  New patient safety studies seem to be coming out regularly these days, all of which reach the same conclusion – things are shockingly bad and only getting worse (and we would add, especially as more states enact laws making it harder and harder for injured patients to hold unsafe hospitals accountable in court.)   

Studies have just come out in two states – California and Oregon- which coincidently are states that are right next to each other, with one having had a $250,000 “cap” on compensation for patients for 36 years (California) and one with no cap (Oregon) as it is unconstitutional there.  Let’s compare!

First, Oregon.

At least 34 patients died as a result of preventable mistakes in Oregon hospitals last year, the same number reported in 2009 to the Oregon Patient Safety Commission.

While the number is small in comparison to the tens of thousands of people safely restored to health in hospitals each year, it is one of several indicators of stalled progress in reducing serious medical errors. In each of the past two years, for instance, Oregon hospitals reported 10 wrong site, wrong patient, or wrong procedure errors. Surgical teams accidentally left objects in patients 21 times in 2009 and 18 times in 2010, despite the commission setting a target of eliminating this type of error. 

So that's not so good.  But is California any better?  Hardly.  There, 12 hospitals were just "fined by state regulators for mistakes that killed three patients or threatened the health of others, state regulators announced Thursday."   These tragic deaths are bad enough but check out the stories of patients who actually survived:

—A 25-year-old woman having a baby had to be revived after she received intravenous drugs to control labor pain instead of a drug to control uterine bleeding at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center in Martinez. The woman had seizures and her heart stopped.

Health director Dr. William Walker said the medical center has taken measures to prevent the error from happening again and that he welcomed the attention to help educate other hospitals about the mix-up that led to the error.

—Last year, a patient was given 10 times the proper dosage of a drug used to treat an abnormal heart rhythm at Promise Hospital of East Los Angeles. The patient suffered a slow heartbeat and plunging blood pressure.

—In 2009, a patient being treated for a kidney stone at AHMC Anaheim Regional Medical Center in Orange County had a stent, or tube, inserted on the wrong side of the body—the left side. The stone was on the right side.

The hospital released a statement saying it has implemented a corrective plan to ensure that no similar error is repeated.

—Last year, several patients at Emanuel Medical Center in the Stanislaus County community of Turlock improperly received the anti-nausea drug droperidol. A federal warning indicates that the drug can cause life-threatening heart rhythm problems and should not be used on people with heart rhythm problems. Regulators said some patients who received the drug had such problems and others didn't have the required electrocardiogram testing before it was administered.

Emanuel spokeswoman Pennie C. Rorex said the hospital has had no further issues since implementing a state-approved rectification plan that included the removal of droperidol from its supply.

—A bit of a fetal scalp electrode, used to monitor fetal distress, was left in a woman who had a cesarean section in 2008 at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco.

Area manager Christine Robisch said such situations are extremely unusual, but that staff responded to the incident by immediately taking care of the patient, reporting the incident to the state and taking corrective action.

—A fragment of a surgical sponge was left in the eye of a patient who had eye surgery in 2009 at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame, in San Mateo County.

—A foot-long metal retractor was left in a 66-year-old woman who had abdominal surgery in 2010 at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas in San Diego County.

In 2009, a 28-inch-long guide wire used for a cardiac catheterization on an 82-year-old patient at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla was left in the femoral artery and only discovered 29 days later during a second catheterization.

Scripps spokeswoman Janice Collins said the hospitals self-reported both incidents to the state and notified the patients—who were unharmed—and their families. She said changes were implemented to prevent such incidents from occurring again.

Palomar Medical Center, Pomerado Hospital, Promise Hospital and Mills-Peninsula Medical Center did not return calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.

The results speak for themselves, right?  I’m hoping that one of the reasons President Obama continues to oppose capping compensation for patients are studies like this.  And the one sure to be released next month, and the next month, and so on and so on and so on.

1199/SEIU Needs A Cesar Chavez/John Steinbeck Tutorial

You know these days, there are unions, and there are unions. Take hospital workers, for example.

In today’s Huffington Post, there is a wonderful story about the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), the union of nurses, technicians and other hospital workers at Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System who are refusing to accept management’s proposals for layoffs and cuts to pensions and health benefits after discovering that the hospital’s outgoing CEO, Sam Downing, is getting paid nearly $4 million. By the union making an issue about executive salaries, “[t]he hospital’s top officials now face a firestorm in the local media and an audit from the state of California. The layoffs and benefit cuts are, at least for now, on hold.”

Contrast this with what recently happened in New York State, where the hospital workers union, the very powerful 1199/SEIU, sat on a task force with hospital executives to decide on Medicaid cuts, where together they agreed to support budget cuts in exchange for taking away the rights of sick and injured patients (who may nor may not be union members, by the way), even though the same amount of money could have been saved by capping executive salaries. (I mean, the research and legislative solution were right there. See a full executive salary list here.) Not a peep out of the union on this, however.

I think 1199/SEIU leaders need to spend some time in the Salinas Valley, soaking up their labor history and re-learning the role of unions in trying to make life better for our country’s most vulnerable - instead of selling them out.  As Huffington notes, this area of the country, "has a long history of labor struggles, with conflict between big agricultural growers and working-class farmers going back decades. John Steinbeck, who wrote extensively about the plight of migrant workers, chose to set several of his stories in the Salinas area, including ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and ‘East of Eden.’ Cesar Chavez led local farmers in a massive strike there during the early 1970s. … Like the farmers of yesteryear, Salinas hospital workers plan on striking rather than making significant concessions.”

We’re behind you, Salinas hospital workers! 

Rental Car Dangers - From Microbacteria to Fuel Tank Defects

About a year ago, the Today Show ran a piece about the filthy interiors of rental cars and ever since, I’ve been carrying around Wet Wipes.  I tend to rent cars a lot.  Now I realize that rather than Wet Wipes, I should be carrying around an auto mechanic.

At the New York Times automobile blog, Wheels, Christopher Jenson has been doing some great reporting about how rental car companies sometimes don’t comply with safety recalls – or at least, they think it’s OK to decide on their own whether a recall is important enough to respect.

Yesterday, the blog discussed actual letters from the major rental car companies, who have “told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that in some cases they continue to rent vehicles that have been recalled if they believe the problem is not serious,” or “what a Hertz executive called ‘a true safety recall.’”

Of course, there is no such thing.  A safety recall is a safety recall.  NHTSA spokesperson Karen Aldana says, “All safety recalls resulting from defects present an unreasonable risk to safety and we believe it is inappropriate to suggest that some defects are not risky enough to require repair.  For the safety of the motoring public, all recalled vehicles should be fixed promptly.” 

Jenson writes,

The safety agency began its investigation last year, shortly after the Federal Trade Commission was asked by two consumer groups, Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety and the Center for Auto Safety, to order Enterprise Rent-A-Car to fix recalled vehicles before renting them. Enterprise has admitted in a California court that its failure to fix a Chrysler PT Cruiser was responsible for the deaths of two California women when their car caught fire and crashed.  The F.T.C. has yet to act on that request.

That would be the tragic case of Jacqueline Houck and her sister, Raechel (which we covered here and here), who died because Enterprise failed to carry out a safety recall of the car they rented. 

Earlier, Jenson reported,

The American Car Rental Association wants the government to adopt a new system that would designate some recalls as so serious that a vehicle should no longer be driven while others would allow cars to be driven and repaired later. …

Rosemary Shahan, the president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety of Sacramento, said in an e-mail that the proposal would “perpetuate rental-car roulette and allow rental car companies to get away with renting out vehicles that are so unsafe they are being recalled.”

The idea of a two-tier system amounts to a license to rent cars with “with unrepaired safety defects,” Clarence Ditlow, the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, wrote in an e-mail.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has asked the Federal Trade Commission to explain why rental car companies are allowed to rent out vehicles that have not been repaired even though auto dealers may not sell a new vehicle if a recall is pending. He has also said he plans to introduce a bill this year that would put rental-car companies under the same restriction as new-car dealers.

In California, a bill is moving through the legislature that would make California "the first state to require car rental companies to pull vehicles out of service when they receive notice of a safety recall.”  The rental car companies believe this “unfairly targets them” arguing “the matter should be handled at the federal level so they do not have to deal with a patchwork of rules.”

How fortunate for them that currently, the federal agency, NHTSA, “lacks the authority to force rental companies" to recall cars.  Where's the Today Show when you need them?

 

As If Breast Cancer Patients Don't Have Enough to Worry About

This week, the Food and Drug Administration issued its most serious type of recall - one involving “situations in which there is a reasonable probability that use of these products will cause serious adverse health consequences or death” - for a medical device that it had already approved called Axxent FlexiShield Mini.  This is a radiation shield that was implanted in women with breast cancer, a device that was supposed to protect them but for the 30 women who participated in a study to see how well it worked (yes, after the FDA had already “approved” it), it left their breast tissue and chest muscles riddled with hundreds of heavy metal tungsten particles. 

As the New York Times wrote in March:

Women participating in a study of patients with breast cancer have been inadvertently left with hundreds of tiny particles of the heavy metal tungsten in their breast tissue and chest muscles. The particles came from a device used during surgery. The device has since been recalled.

It is not known if the metal is dangerous to health because relatively little research has been done on its long-term effects in the body. But it shows up on mammograms, and may make them difficult to read, an especially troubling effect for women who have already had breast cancer and worry about recurrences. (The particles resemble calcium deposits, which can indicate cancer.)

About 30 women have been affected, according to the manufacturer of the device that caused the problem, the Axxent FlexiShield Mini. The women are in a quandary. At least one, fearing that the tungsten could cause cancer or another illness, is trying to decide whether to get rid of the particles by having her breast and its underlying tissue removed in a radical and disfiguring operation.

Good for the FDA for taking this step, especially since the manufacturer’s initial response to this back in March when it recalled the product was, “No patient injuries were reported, and we believe this issue has no impact on the safety and efficacy of the radiation therapy delivered by the Axxent System, as the Flexishield Mini is a radiation shield.”

Apparently, neither its manufacturer nor the F.D.A. could explain what went wrong with the device begging the question, how the FDA ended up approving this pad in the first place?  The Times explains:

The Axxent FlexiShield Mini had been cleared by the drug agency in June 2009 in an abbreviated process used for devices that are considered equivalent to products already on the market. That process, known as 510(k), takes less time than the procedure used to approve a new device, and it generally does not require tests on humans.

The episode casts doubt on the safeguards for people who participate in medical research and on the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to protect the public from flawed medical devices.

Unfortunately, the public and political leaders (e.g., Congress and state politicians who think it’s a good idea to immunize drug and device companies from any liability) still seem to have no clue as to how flawed the FDA approval process really is:

The first patient to take part in the study at Hoag said the events had shattered her faith in the vigilance of the drug agency, the hospital and her surgeon, who she said enthusiastically talked her into participating, emphasizing how convenient it would be to finish radiation treatment before she even woke from surgery.

“I do work, so it was appealing,” said the woman, a 57-year-old psychologist with a busy practice who did not want her name used for privacy reasons.

..

It never occurred to the first patient that the equipment might be faulty, she said, because she knew that it had been approved by the F.D.A. She also trusted the doctor and hospital to ensure that the study was safe.

“I had this illusion, like most people do, that the F.D.A. wouldn’t allow this to happen,” she said. “I definitely feel like a lab rat now.” …

“I went to my oncologist,” she said. “He just was beside himself. He just said: ‘You’ve got to get this out of you. It’s toxic. You can’t have this in your system.’ ”

He urged her to have a mastectomy and recommended a surgeon, who told her that to remove the tungsten, he would have to remove her entire breast and some of the chest muscles.

“I would have a dent in my side,” she said. “He said he didn’t really want to move ahead until there was more information because it would be so disfiguring. That made me physically ill. I’d kind of gotten myself used to the idea of having a mastectomy, but not being disfigured.”

Who could possibly blame her and others for now suing the hospital and the manufacturer for causing this kind of torture and mutilation?

The Coble Family on Oprah – Suing for the Right Reasons

Most of Oprah’s show yesterday, called “The Worst Days Of Their Lives And The Miraculous Twist Of Fate”  was spent on the story of California’s Coble family.   You could hardly imagine a more tragic story than this.  Several years ago, Lori Coble was stuck in traffic on a busy freeway with her three small kids in back when a truck going about 55 mph rammed into the back of the car.  Lori lived.  All three children died (pictured here).  Fantastically, in 2008 the couple, Chris and Lori, gave birth to triplets (i.e., the miracle). 

The truck driver was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to 364 days in jail and five years probation.  But as we watched the show, we couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to this story.  How a truck driver could have been so reckless?  Was he texting?  No, Oprah would have been all over that.  Was he drunk?  Did the brakes fail?  What else?

Then things started to make a bit more sense.  Towards the end of the show, you discover that the Cobles had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Caltrans, which is responsible for ensuring the safety of California freeways.  Their motive wasn’t money.  It was safety – to try to force Caltrans to fix this unsafe highway, arguing that “faulty design of that stretch of freeway led to a backup, which led to the accident.”  They noted, “Caltrans reports from a decade ago that called for an additional lane at the Oso Parkway off-ramp because traffic was backing up on the freeway for a half-mile before the exit.”  See more here.  

However, the California jury said no, finding Caltrans not at fault.  Chris Coble said, "We feel we unjustly lost based on the fact that the road remained unchanged for 10 years even though it was identified as a danger zone … We wanted to let people know that our story does not have a happy ending.”  Even worse, they were ordered to pay Caltrans $291,534.04 in fees and costs.

People bring lawsuits for a lot of reasons, and very often money is not the motive.  It’s to make sure that their own tragedy is not repeated, to spare others their pain and make us all safer.  It’s a risk to sue, but one for which families like this shouldn’t be penalized.  Here is their website, in case you’d like to help them out. 

B is for Bastards and Other Hot News

Lots of interesting non-election stuff in the news, too!  Here’s a little review:

Reuters reports, “A new survey of primary care practices in North Carolina shows nearly one in six patients believed their physician had made a wrong diagnosis or a treatment error, and about one in seven said they had changed doctor as a result.… [E]ight percent said they had experienced ‘a lot’ or ‘severe’ harm from the perceived mistake in care."

Meanwhile, a new study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers found that “telling physicians they shouldn't accept gifts from drug companies is all well and good.  But convincing them that doing so is wrong is another matter... [P]hysicians rationalize such gifts as payback for all the sacrifices they made to get their education -- although they may not realize they're doing it.  The attitude, the researchers said, is one of ‘because I'm worth it.’” 

Here’s another thing some docs may think they’re entitled to do: branding body parts. Smoking Gun reports, “After performing a hysterectomy last year, a California gynecologist used a cauterizing tool to brand his patient’s name on her removed uterus, an unorthodox move that the doctor calls a ‘friendly gesture,’ but which the woman terms ‘despicable conduct’ in a medical negligence lawsuit.”

As for one of the medical establishment’s best “tort reform” allies, the tobacco industry, they’re having a good day thanks to Supreme Court Antonin Scalia, who granted their request to block “a state court order requiring tobacco companies to pay $270 million for a smoking cessation program in Louisiana.”  We’ll see what happens when the full court gets its hands on this case – a class action that the tobacco industry lost.

And now that we’re on the topic of doctors and tobacco, Texas Magistrate says that Texas' brutal, anti-patient tort reform law, which “capped medical liability for non-economic damages at $250,000, doesn't violate victims' constitutional rights.”   Yeah, the business and medical lobbies took care of that by getting the constitution changed first. 

BP oil fund administrator Ken Feinberg has changed his tune on ruling that certain businesses are ineligible to submit claims based on “proximity.”  That may seem like a victory for some, but not so fast. Check out Olbermann’s Worst Person’s segment last night on MSNBC, skewering BP and its new chief executive, Bob Dudley, over their recent courtroom shenanigans.  Read, or watch, below:

BP's court filings say the fishermen, seafood processors, hotel owner, restaurateur, oyster farmers and the like must first apply to relief from the official BP compensation fund, that they must play that game of bureaucratic red tape before they can begin to sue. Even the lawyers are saying they should wait until next March before which test cases should proceed to trial and which should not. That's moving too fast for BP and now we know why.  BP agreed to the $20 billion fund. Because it buys them time for the public to forget, for the remaining oil to dissipate, for them to potentially lose internal memos and e-mails and text messages and other evidence of their culpability, and especially time for the victims to run out of money with which to pay their lawyers. Bob Dudley of BP, never did figure out what the P really stands for. But the B is clearly for bastards, today's worst person in the world.

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