End the War on Freedom

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JAN. 29, 2002
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Nevada needs tort reform
Obstetricians, already in short supply, closing down or fleeing

When would be an appropriate time for the state of Nevada to embrace tort reform? When the state's last practicing obstetrician shuts his or her doors?

Malpractice insurance rates for Nevada physicians treating highest-risk patients -- obstetricians, neurosurgeons, and emergency room doctors -- are in the process of jumping, in round figures, from $40,000 last year to a new average of $200,000 annually, per physician, with no halt in sight. And area health professionals and insurance companies both say most of that prodigious leap is due to frivolous malpractice lawsuits and the absence of any cap on damages which can be sought in court.

One Las Vegas obstetrician who's been practicing in the area more than 30 years tells the Review-Journal's Joelle Babula he'll be selling his practice this week because he cannot afford insurance premiums slated to increase from $40,000 to $130,000. "I just cannot afford it. I would be working for nothing," the doctor says.

Another local doctor now limits his practice to gynecology and has stopped delivering babies, after seeing his insurance premiums leap from $46,000 to $225,000. "I just could not financially afford to keep delivering babies," explains OB/GYN Steve Kramer. Nurse-midwives are also fleeing the profession in the face of equivalent insurance rate hikes, from $7,500, give or take, to $50,000 per year.

"Our company was granted a 35 percent rate increase due to the frequency and severity of claims in the state," explains Dennis Coffin, the Nevada representative for American Physician's Assurance, one of the state's larger medical malpractice carriers. "Nevada is getting a really bad reputation."

Dr. John Nowins, president of the Clark County OB/GYN Society, is asking Gov. Kenny Guinn to call a special legislative session to set a cap on malpractice jury awards, and to institute penalties for lawyers and patients who pursue complaints later determined to be frivolous.

"We're not saying that doctors who have done something terribly wrong shouldn't be held responsible, but we can't handle these personal injury attorneys attacking us and suing us relentlessly," Dr. Nowins explains.

Nevada malpractice attorneys respond that the real problem is price-gouging by the insurance carriers. "If doctors are being sued successfully, then they've obviously done something wrong," says local attorney Charles Lybarger. "We are protecting the public from doctors that make mistakes and hurt people."

In fact, jury-award caps (some are proposing that Nevada impose one like California's, which limits damages to $250,000) do effectively limit an injured party's access to the courts. If a breadwinner earning six figures a year is killed or permanently disabled through gross negligence and malpractice, the courts should give that family at least some hope of being made whole, if we expect plaintiffs to forgo extra-legal solutions.

But the willingness of attorneys like Mr. Lybarger to see those who "do something wrong ... and hurt people" properly penalized and assessed for the damages they cause is certainly welcome. Since excessive insurance premiums caused in part by nuisance suits certainly "hurt" patients whose doctors close their doors -- requiring the fewer remaining doctors to see more patients and thus deliver lower-quality care in order to make ends meet -- it follows that such suits indisputably "hurt people."

The personal injury bar should thus have no objection to the institution of a "loser pays" system in which those whose lawsuits are found to be without substantial merit are required to pay the defendants' legal fees and court costs, as well as reasonable compensation for their time lost.

As for "price-gouging" by insurance firms, the solution, as ever, is to clear away any regulatory obstructions that bar entry into the field by more competitors (while also repealing the regressive state tax on insurance premiums.) The Chevy dealer can't very well charge you $50,000 for a Geo once the new Hyundai dealer sets up across the street.

"Loser pays" is the first tort reform Nevada needs. No one is saying doctors should not be liable for malfeasance or non-feasance far out of line with normal practice. But too many in our litigious society today believe "someone must pay" for any negative outcome ... even one which, a generation ago, would have been more sensibly accepted as "the will of God."

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Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $96 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591, where information on his next book, "The Ballad of Carl Drega," is also available. Vin's first book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement" (the 1999 "Freedom Book of the Year") is available at 1-800-244-2224.

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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken