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Nationally Syndicated Columnist Endorses Common Good Proposal Stuart Taylor, Jr.
The National Journal, January 29, 2005 Nationally syndicated columnist Stuart Taylor, Jr., writing in the January 29th issue of The National Journal, endorses Common Good's proposal for special health courts.
Taylor writes:
Another worthy proposal is championed by Common Good, a bipartisan law-reform group founded by Manhattan lawyer-author-civic activist Philip Howard and backed by a broad coalition of health care and legal experts. The Common Good proposal would create special health courts, with expert judges taking the place of juries, to provide patients and doctors alike with fairer, faster, cheaper, more-consistent, and more-predictable justice.
When patients sue doctors for such things as failing to order costly CT scans for routine headaches that later turn out to be brain cancers, Howard stresses, only expert judges can reliably and predictably distinguish good from bad medical care and give doctors clear guidance on what the law requires. Such special courts should be twinned, he says, with beefed-up regulatory oversight to put incompetent doctors under scrutiny or out of business.
Taylor's column outlines the "worst features" of the current malpractice system, highlighting many of the points that Common Good has emphasized:
This system does nothing for most victims of medical negligence, the vast majority of whom are not compensated at all and the rest of whom wait years before getting a dime. The system cannot reliably distinguish good doctors from bad ones, and it thus exposes those who have done nothing wrong to the risk of ruinous liability. It wastes huge sums on legal fees. And it helps drive up the cost of health care.
While there is "much to be said for curbing pain-and-suffering awards," Taylor argues, the system is in need of more comprehensive reform both to "prevent medical errors, which cause as many as 100,000 deaths a year," and to remedy "the peculiar randomness of malpractice litigation." Most injured patients--over 90 percent--are never compensated for their injuries, but "the few juries that do find doctors negligent are wrong 80 percent of the time."
Click to read Stuart Taylor's column in the National Journal. (subscription needed).
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