Letters by Earlene Burney and Jane
Marshall
were published in various Tennessee papers.
Robertson County Times
Capping malpractice suit limits is not good idea
To the Editor:
I am grateful that Rep. Rob Briley is looking for the real causes for the high cost of medical
malpractice insurance. Fortunately, he is not buying the ill-considered and self-serving claims
made by members of the medical profession.
Russ Miller, spokesman for the Tennessee Medical Association, said caps have proven to be a
solution in California. California has repeatedly been held up as the poster child of tort reform,
wrongly so.
In February, I had the privilege of testifying in Washington, D.C. during the Democratic Forum on
medical malpractice chaired by Congressman John Conyers Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary
Committee. Conyers said, “In 1975, California enacted the ‘Medical Injury Compensation Reform
Act’. Despite these ‘reforms,’ premiums for medical malpractice in California grew more
quickly between 1991 and 2000 than in the nation – 3.5 percent vs. 1.9 percent, respectively. And
between 1975 and 1993, California’s health care cost rose 343 percent, almost double the rate of
inflation.”
Predictably, the medical community is perpetrating another myth, that doctors are quitting practicing
medicine en masse or are heading pell mell for other states. According to Tort Reform GAO Report
8.03, that is not the case. According to the report, “We also determined that many of the
reported provider actions taken in response to malpractice pressures were not substantiated or
did not widely affect access to health care. For example, some reports of physicians relocating to
other states, retiring, or closing practices were not accurate or involved relatively
few physicians.”
Malpractice is at the root of the problem. Insurance companies are the beneficiaries of the
problem. The solution is obvious: stop malpractice or, at least, curb it significantly, and regulate
insurance companies.
Please don’t take away the only weapon patients have to prevent the spread of malpractice: the
threat of a meaningful malpractice award imposed by a jury.
Earlene Burney
Clarksville
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Nursing home fines lowered if uncontested
To the Editor:
In a letter to the editor of a Tennessee newspaper about speeding, "Lawbreakers don't care about
amount of fines," Tom Spencer made a compelling argument when he quoted Judge Roy Bean, who said,
"Lawbreakers are not stopped by the severity of the punishment, but by the certainty of it."
Surely that applies not only to people who exceed the speed limit but to owners and administrators
of nursing homes as well. While there is a similarity between the punishment of speeders and
of people who create an environment in nursing homes conducive to abuse and neglect, there are
some jarring differences as well.
Speeders run the risk of being fined 365 days a year, while nursing homes, with rare exceptions,
risk being fined only once a year when state health surveyors show up at the door within a
predictable time frame.
When a speeder causes the death of someone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time, a charge of manslaughter is in order. When someone is abused or neglected in a nursing home,
a citation is sometimes given, followed by a request for a written plan of correction, and, on
occasion, followed by a fine.
When a speeder is fined, his fine is not lowered if he doesn't contest it. When a nursing home is
fined, that fine is lowered considerably if it isn't contested.
Incredibly, fines are lowered even when there is a finding of wrongful death. I know that a
regulation is in place that allows those fines to be lowered. That is one regulation that should be
changed.
It would be interesting and, I suspect, alarming to know how many fines imposed against nursing
homes are never collected.
Since crimes committed in nursing homes are virtually always beyond the reach of criminal
courts, state health officials have a responsibility to use what little clout they have
by making the punishment of criminals who abuse and neglect old people in nursing homes a certainty.
Jane Marshall
Clarksville