The magic of Texas Medical Oversight

[Autumnlicious]

http://www.texasobserver.org/anatomy-tra...1E.twitter

Nothing like a couple patient deaths, severe maiming and tonnes of documented evidence of malpractice to result in a temporary license suspension.

All made possible by Texas Logic ®.

My favorite part:

Up until 2003, medical care in Texas was regulated by a system of checks. Hospital management, the court system and the Texas Medical Board formed a web of regulation that penalized and prevented bad care.

But in the past 10 years, a series of conservative reforms have severely limited patients’ options for holding doctors and hospitals accountable for bad care. In 2003, the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature capped pain-and-suffering damages in medical malpractice lawsuits at $250,000. Even if a plaintiff wins the maximum award, after you pay your lawyer and your experts and go through, potentially, years of trial, not much is left.

The Legislature has also made suing hospitals difficult. Texas law states­ that hospitals are liable for damages caused by doctors in their facilities only if the plaintiff can prove that the hospital acted with “malice”—that is, the hospital knew of extreme risk and ignored it—in credentialing a doctor. But the Legislature hindered plaintiffs’ cases even more by allowing hospitals to, in most cases, keep credentialing information confidential. In effect, plaintiffs have to prove a very tough case without access to the necessary hospital records. This is an almost impossible standard to meet, and it has left hospitals immune to the actions of whatever doctors they bring on. Hospitals can get all of the benefit of an expensive surgeon practicing in their facility and little of the exposure. This has freed hospitals from the fear of litigation, but it’s also removed the financial motivation for policing their own physicians.

The medical malpractice cap and the near-immunity for hospitals snapped two threads from the regulatory web. What remained was the Texas Medical Board.

All made possible through tort reform and litigation limitation...

Tort Reform is retard for "Don't let a judge and jury decide how much you should get from malfeasance".

[Creed of Heresy]

What's this?

*peers at the post*

Do you mean...

No. Surely not...

Surely you are not saying that Republicans are dick-silly halfwits! Surely the biggest corporate-whores aren't fucking us all over! Say it ain't so, Moros!

No but seriously this is fucked up, right here. It takes a special kind of retard to come up with the kind of half-baked logic that this "reform" represents.

A special kind we like to call "republican."

[Captain Colostomy]

I'm surprised ambulance chasers haven't fought this to be repealed. Maybe it's easier just to move on to something more lucrative...like shilling the businesses that no longer stress bankruptcy due to lawsuits?

Everything's bigger in Texas, I reckon, especially the number of asshats.

[Rahul]

One out of every twelve Americans are Texans. Gotta be a ton of retards with that many people.

The Republicans are losing their grip. Every presidential election here there are 3 percent fewer Anglos comprising the voting. And the younger Anglos are way more liberal than the previous generations.

The old, white conservatives are getting a little long in the tooth and are developing dementia and Alzheimers. They're making a hell of a mess before they shuffle off into retirement. But it'll all get worked out before too long.

[Autumnlicious]

I can't wait for that.

Undoing the damage from redistricting is going to be difficult though.

[Minimalist]

But in the past 10 years, a series of conservative reforms have severely limited patients’ options for holding doctors and hospitals accountable for bad care.

Gee. I wonder which groups gives more bribes....um, "campaign contributions?"