I've been following the story about the trauma center in Las Vegas with some interest. Particularly since I happened to be in Las Vegas on a poker-playing jaunt one time when my brother in law had a bad fall and ended up in this now-closed trauma center for spine work. When I went to visit him, he looked like one of the better-off patients. (He recovered well.) Anyway, the story linked below has a lot of issues in it. It's not clear that what the doctors want the legislature to do will lower their malpractice bills a whole lot. The one doctor is also saying that docs can't get a malpractice policy over $1 million. This is kind of scary because when a spine surgeon commits real malpractice, $1 million is a drop in the bucket. Even if pain and suffering awards are limited to 250,000, other damages in a lot of cases can be millions. In a previous article a prominent Las Vegas attorney indicated that he always accepted policy limits from docs, never going after them personally. I know that many insurance companies won't cough up limits in very good cases though. I am not a proponent of tort reform, but the situation in Las Vegas looks bad. I am not sure of what will happen or what should be done.


Also interesting are the communists in the article who think doctors can be enslaved. They cite the Hippocratic Oath as a means to force doctors to treat people for a price others dictate. Telling doctors they can't go on "strike"? In this regard, I am on the docs' side completely. The doctor who said he was a private practitioner and had a right to look out for his family is totally correct. The government getting involved in medical care was the first step down the road to totally collectivized medicine which will necessarily be worse than non-collectivized medicine. Bad situation on all fronts.