Ralph Nader

“ Propaganda and slanting the news are going hand in hand these days, choreographed by the hidden persuaders hired by the American Medical Association together with the behind-the-scenes lobbyists of the gouging insurance companies. ”

“ Part of the answer is that the insurance companies are scaring many doctors with spectres of litigation volume that simply does not exist.
Malpractice cases filed and actual payments in constant dollars have been level for many years; about nine of ten malpractice harms do not result in any law suits being filed, according to various studies. Yet the human toll is deadly. A Harvard study estimated that gross malpractice just in hospitals takes 80,000 American lives a year plus causing hundreds of thousands of serious injuries. ”

“ A favorite way to achieve this callous goal is to put a $250,000 lifetime cap on pain and suffering. Apart from the fact that some insurance executives make that much in one week, every week, from your premium insurance dollars, consider how such a cap wrecks the innocent in California. ”

“ Instead both lobbies are funding and pressing legislators to enact laws that politicize the courts, tie the hands of judges and juries -- the only ones who see, hear and evaluate the evidence before them -- and make it harder for innocent men, women and children to bring tragic cases to court and obtain an adequate award. ”

“ Because the companies have learned in the past thirty years to over-classify their risk pools, thereby reducing their number to specific specialties like obstetrics or orthopedic surgery in order to charge much more. In addition, by not surcharging the few bad physicians in these specialties (known as experience loss rating) , the good specialists pay as much as incompetent ones with a large number of payouts to their wounded patients. ”