I am very sorry for your friend's wife. That's.... it really really sucks. It occurs to me that if all the medical malpractice deaths (250,000) were paid out a

I am very sorry for your friend's wife. That's.... it really really sucks. It occurs to me that if all the medical malpractice deaths (250,000) were paid out at that cap ($500k), that would cost 125 billion dollars. We don't have a lot of extra room in our budget right now, so that's going to be tough to pay out, even though it's not even enough. But clearly the even bigger problem is the 250,000 unnecessary dead people. If we took a part of that money and used it to fund an agency that just works to fine-tune and eliminate medical malpractice deaths, that would save almost double the amount of people that die from guns and automobiles each year. But that wouldn't help your friend's wife, who didn't die. What would have helped her would have been avoiding medicine that was not necessary, like the epidural. Of course it would have been an excruciating delivery that nobody should have to endure - but I think a risk assessment would conclude that the risk (death) is not worth the benefit (lack of pain). At the same time, having better drugs would also help, but we don't necessarily have that as an option today. So perhaps a campaign to avoid unnecessary medical procedures, and literature to help educate and give agency to those who would be going through those procedures, would be helpful.