{"id":3197,"date":"2009-09-14T11:43:45","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T17:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.myphillylawyer.com\/?p=261"},"modified":"2009-09-14T11:43:45","modified_gmt":"2009-09-14T17:43:45","slug":"tort-reform-be-careful-what-you-may-wish-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myphillylawyer.com\/yue\/2009\/09\/14\/tort-reform-be-careful-what-you-may-wish-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Tort reform: be careful what you may wish for"},"content":{"rendered":"

The premise of tort reform is popular with politicians and big corporations, who use it as a target for\u00a0 “cleaning up”\u00a0 our complex legal system.\u00a0 But if you or your family needs to sue for damages following an injury, the wrong kind of tort reform could be very harmful.<\/p>\n

The idea behind tort reform sounds logical \u2013 to reform the legal system to prevent unnecessary lawsuits against doctors,\u00a0 especially under the premise that such suits cause health care costs to skyrocket and medical professionals to quit their practices because of ever-increasing malpractice insurance premiums.<\/p>\n

The problem, though,\u00a0 is like gravity \u2013 what goes up, must come down.<\/p>\n

\"U.S.

U.S. Supreme Court building, Washington, D.C. Image credit: \u00a9 iStockphoto.com\/hundreddays<\/p><\/div>\n

So while the idea of tort reform sounds logical, the problem is that such measures are usually written by medical and insurance company lobbyists who are looking to cut the risks for medical professionals who either make the occasional mistake while providing medical care or,\u00a0 worse yet,\u00a0 are those who are incompetent and regularly cause injuries to patients.\u00a0 Rather than looking out for patients, tort reform looks out for those medical professionals who have wronged their patients.<\/p>\n

And that’s simply not acceptable.<\/p>\n

Supporters of tort reform, the loud, accusatory advocates who inflame the issue by targeting “trial lawyers” \u2013 as though lawyers are the evil at the core of the issue \u2013 don’t ever mention that if it weren’t for poor medical care in these cases, there wouldn’t be such lawsuits.<\/p>\n

Tort reform as it is touted by its predatory advocates would mean that you and your family would give up or be vastly limited in your legal rights to sue in the event you were the victims of poor medical care.\u00a0 So instead of doctors and other medical professionals being held accountable for their mistakes in diagnosis, treatment and care of patients, costs would be contained \u2013 at the expense of injured and aggrieved patients and their families.<\/p>\n

In fact, medical corporate America doesn\u2019t really care about tort reform.\u00a0 Instead, they care about cutting their losses and damage awards when poor care is given. They care about leaving victims with no means of recovering their deserved damages,\u00a0 all in the name of supposed “reform.”<\/p>\n

That’s not “tort reform.”\u00a0 That’s passing the buck at its worst.<\/p>\n

Tort reform is a euphemism used by doctors and corporate America who don\u2019t want to be held accountable for their misdeeds that ultimately and unfortunately have maimed and killed our friends and family members.<\/p>\n

Negligent parties should be responsible for all of the damages that they cause (including punitive damages).\u00a0 How else will we ever get more careful doctors and better health care for our families?<\/p>\n

Just say “no” to such “tort reform.”\u00a0\u00a0 If you are ever injured by a medical professional, your long-term well-being will depend on maintaining your right to sue.\u00a0 Your family and your financial future depend on it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The premise of tort reform is popular with politicians and big corporations, who use it as a target for\u00a0 “cleaning up”\u00a0 our complex legal system.\u00a0 But if you or your family needs to sue for damages following an injury, the wrong kind of tort reform could be very harmful. The idea behind tort reform sounds…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myphillylawyer.com\/yue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myphillylawyer.com\/yue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myphillylawyer.com\/yue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myphillylawyer.com\/yue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myphillylawyer.com\/yue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myphillylawyer.com\/yue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myphillylawyer.com\/yue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myphillylawyer.com\/yue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myphillylawyer.com\/yue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}