Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
In the U.S., physicians often fear that if a patient experiences a bad health outcome, the physician will be liable for millions of dollars as part of a malpractice suit. Although the malpractice system in the U.S. may be far from perfect, most physicians would certainly prefer it over the more informal forms of “malpractice”…
Problems: Malpractice Insurance is expensive. Medical errors are associated with 98,000 deaths every year [more than twice the deaths from car accidents by some estimates.] About two-thirds of the guidelines developed by AHPR between 1990 and 1996 were out of date with current research by 2001. Solutions: One solution is to enact damage caps. These…
The Scotland Sun reports that the Scottish NHS paid £23 million ($40 million) to patients for subpar care. Is this due to the inherently substandard quality of care in a single-payer system? The answer is likely no. This figure only amounts to about £4.50 ($7.34) for every person in Scotland however. Drug-related errors in the…