The Cato Institute’s Professor Shirley Svorny presents in an Forbes Magazine op-ed piece that capping the damage awards for noneconomic and punitive damages would result in patients and injury victims losing the benefit of penalties associated with malpractice underwriting.

Prof. Svorny suggest that if liability is capped for doctors and hospitals, it could reduce incentives to investigate the true risks for each patient.

What any injury attorney in San Francisco or anywhere in the country where damage caps have been enacted knows, is that capping damage awards for noneconomic damages virtually eliminates recourse for most malpractice and denies justice to injury victims.

Medical malpractice cases can be very complicated, expensive, and require a high degree of legal and medical expertise.  A single medical malpractice case can cost several hundred thousand dollars to prosecute.  When jury awards for noneconomic damages are limited, then the only viable malpractice cases are those where the plaintiff has substantial economic damages, which normally come in the form of lost wages or lost earning capacity.  Thus, the most vulnerable in our society – the very young and the elderly – are effectively priced out of legal representation.

We need reforms that allow doctors to focus more on their patients and worry less about malpractice premiums.  Damage caps are simply not the way to achieve that goal, however.

Tags: San Francisco injury attorney Brett Burlison comments on Medical Malpractice damage caps.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Health care reform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.