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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (34990)	11/1/1998 10:13:00 AM
From: wily	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

Help! Could the person who posted that excellent appreciation of Cramer (it might have been a re-post from another thread) please point me to it (if it's not too much trouble--I'm still looking). Or, if anyone remembers who posted it or the approximate day, that would help. This thread is just too big to find anything in. TIA, wily

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (34990)	11/1/1998 10:26:00 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

ot Lawyers have ruined the lives of many more people than doctors and what is worse they have ruined society. Playgrounds are no longer putting in swingsets- why? Lawyers and lawsuits. Businesses are offering sucky low risk low return options for 401ks- why? Because of liability for idiots who make bad choices in investing their money. Lawyers create many more problems than they solve. I do not believe the same can be said of doctors. I say this as a lawyer who was on the way to medical school before I opted for law school. Law school was much easier than what I would have had to go through in medical school, and getting a PhD would have been even easier. All my friends went on to medical school and I admire them tremendously for their fortitude. I have had extreme good fortune in meeting many wonderful doctors (cannot say the same for lawyers). The standards in this country are very high for acceptance to medical school- I do not believe there are schlocky unaccredited medical schools willing to accept anybody (in THIS country) but there are law schools like that- and they keep churning out the graduates.

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (34990)	11/1/1998 4:55:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Hi Skeet, sorry if I sounded down on doctors. I am not. When a client consults me with a potential med mal case, first level pass is screening interview. Few pass the cut. Medicine is an art, not a science, in the sense that results are not guaranteed and bad things happen. Most initial consults don't involve actual injury, e.g., the doctor said the leg was sprained, then a second x-ray a couple of days later shows a fracture. Mistakes happen, but without long-term or permanent injury, there is no case. The cost of litigation makes it impractical to obtain compensation for a couple of days of needless pain. If there is long-term or permanent injury, I call do what I call a "quick and dirty" on it, obtain records, review the medical literature, review the records myself, I have a medical background, and members of my family are in medical field. If it passes the second cut, I consult with physicians, generally ones employed by teaching colleges. If someone in the field says the injury was caused by a breach of the standard of care of a physician practicing in the field, I proced with the case. First, I try to settle out of court. If I can't, then I file suit and go from there. If I litigate, then I use physicians as expert witnesses. Contrary to the impression of the general public, if the case has merit, it is not that hard to get a credible expert witness to testify on my client's behalf. Further, the client's other treating physicians may support the case as well, although they tend to be in same community, and won't act as expert witness against a colleague. I know that there are a lot of silly lawsuits against doctors, just as there are a lot of silly lawsuits against everyone. Because I only get paid if I win, I don't waste my time on silly cases. I have faith in the collective intelligence of the local juries. By the way, I don't work in Washington, D.C., proper. Juries in urban areas are more generous than juries in suburban areas, partly due I think to less education, they are more susceptible to pettifoggery, more gullible to arguments of the handsome silver-tongued devils in the navy blue suits. Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but it is true that minority juries tend to be more generous. Maybe they just know better what it means to suffer. Out here in the burbs, the audience is a tougher sell, and I don't take iffy cases. I don't think any less of physicians as a group than any other group of working stiffs, what I don't like is the sense of entitlement, that having sacrificed and worked hard, now they are entitled to get rich. I don't know any other group of people who think that. Do you? CobaltBlue