4 ms·

There's all kinds of approved treatments that have a high risk of a bad outcome; if you are informed of those risks, you're not going to prevail in such a lawsu

by mlyle 2y ago

There's all kinds of approved treatments that have a high risk of a bad outcome; if you are informed of those risks, you're not going to prevail in such a lawsuit. Indeed, hoping to be compensated for an ordinary bad outcome through a malpractice lawsuit is one small reason why the US medical system is so screwed up: bad things can happen without it being anyone's fault, but we require to lay blame to get any recompense. Ideally, we'd insure patients against those bad outcomes.

kragen 2y ago
Yeah, I didn't mean that the patients or their families should or would win the lawsuits, but the lawsuit potential still seems like a potential cost driver.
- zdragnar 2y ago
  Nah, you usually have to sign all kinds of waivers to get access to this sort of thing. It's customized, and very few treatments are sold for the amount of research and effort put into it, compared to some chemical formula that they can hand off to a factory to mix and stamp into millions of pills.
paulpauper 2y ago
You can if all the risks were not disclosed, especially if others come forward and it becomes a class action lawsuit. If a waiver is all it takes to shield oneself from malpractice lawsuit, then it would not be such a big problem.
- mlyle 2y ago
  > You can if all the risks were not disclosed, especially if others come forward and it becomes a class action lawsuit. > > ...if you are informed of those risks...
lynx23 2y ago
How do you compensate for death? How do you insure patients against death? Do you realize how cynic your comment is? Even though it is full of facts, these facts are pretty much beside the point. Ruining someones body isn't the same as a casual parking damage. I, for instance, have been a victim of deliberate malpractice as a child, which resulted in 100% blindness. NO money on this planet could actually compensate for what I have to cope with on a daily basis.
- authorfly 2y ago
  His point is not about compensating for loss. It's the fact that options laid out on the table with unknowns can be preferable to people than no options, or fewer options. The same dichotomy exists for crime vs agreements: - You'll be compensated if a party to an agreement breaks a clause or costs you money (say they fail to provide $30k of goods to your business) - But if someone steals your car, the government won't put $30k in your account for a new one. The same loss occurred. The second case was totally unwarranted, yet the individual outcome is worse. Why? Because doing it any other way would make things worse. People would lie about stolen goods, conduct insurance fraud, etc. Unfortunately in some situations, things "which are worse" are a different category and don't have an answer with government intervention.
  - mlyle 2y ago
    > But if someone steals your car, the government won't put $30k in your account for a new one. I understand your point and get that you didn't say this to argue with what I've said. I just want to emphasize that the situation here is different. Here, though, we have a situation where people who are significantly harmed medically try and find malpractice even if none occurred, and juries are usually sympathetic. The consequence is medicine has become a much more defensive and adversarial system. I'm sure that an effort to insure for morbidity from bad outcomes will cause fraud, but it might also save a lot of malpractice litigation costs and reduce the amount of resources spent on defensive medicine, too.
  - kragen 2y ago
    > His point is not about compensating for loss. > It's the fact that options laid out on the table with unknowns can be preferable to people than no options, or fewer options. Assuming you're talking about me, that's not exactly my point. I didn't intend to make any assertions about what patients or their families should or should not do, or in general any normative points (though I did use the word "justification", which I shouldn't have). Rather, what I was saying is that businesses that aren't profitable cease to exist, and if the business's product is an experimental medical therapy that could end up killing a substantial fraction of its patients, the business might lose money when those patients' families sue the business. It's fairly predictable that a good fraction of experimental therapies will have this outcome, even if you don't know which ones in advance. Consequently, businesses that don't price it into their business model will, in most cases, go bankrupt after their first few successful therapies, making them unattractive for venture capital. So the high price tag is somewhat predictable, whatever you may think of its moral status. Separately, your comment seems to imply that damages on breach-of-contract and similar civil tort cases are paid to the plaintiff by the state rather than the defendant. That is not correct. They are paid by the defendant if they are paid at all. In the US, you can also file a civil tort case for conversion against someone who stole your car and get awarded damages in the same way.

by mlyle 2y ago

kragen 2y ago

Yeah, I didn't mean that the patients or their families should or would win the lawsuits, but the lawsuit potential still seems like a potential cost driver.

zdragnar 2y ago
Nah, you usually have to sign all kinds of waivers to get access to this sort of thing. It's customized, and very few treatments are sold for the amount of research and effort put into it, compared to some chemical formula that they can hand off to a factory to mix and stamp into millions of pills.

paulpauper 2y ago

You can if all the risks were not disclosed, especially if others come forward and it becomes a class action lawsuit. If a waiver is all it takes to shield oneself from malpractice lawsuit, then it would not be such a big problem.

mlyle 2y ago
> You can if all the risks were not disclosed, especially if others come forward and it becomes a class action lawsuit. > > ...if you are informed of those risks...

lynx23 2y ago

How do you compensate for death? How do you insure patients against death? Do you realize how cynic your comment is? Even though it is full of facts, these facts are pretty much beside the point. Ruining someones body isn't the same as a casual parking damage. I, for instance, have been a victim of deliberate malpractice as a child, which resulted in 100% blindness. NO money on this planet could actually compensate for what I have to cope with on a daily basis.

authorfly 2y ago
His point is not about compensating for loss. It's the fact that options laid out on the table with unknowns can be preferable to people than no options, or fewer options. The same dichotomy exists for crime vs agreements: - You'll be compensated if a party to an agreement breaks a clause or costs you money (say they fail to provide $30k of goods to your business) - But if someone steals your car, the government won't put $30k in your account for a new one. The same loss occurred. The second case was totally unwarranted, yet the individual outcome is worse. Why? Because doing it any other way would make things worse. People would lie about stolen goods, conduct insurance fraud, etc. Unfortunately in some situations, things "which are worse" are a different category and don't have an answer with government intervention.
- mlyle 2y ago
  > But if someone steals your car, the government won't put $30k in your account for a new one. I understand your point and get that you didn't say this to argue with what I've said. I just want to emphasize that the situation here is different. Here, though, we have a situation where people who are significantly harmed medically try and find malpractice even if none occurred, and juries are usually sympathetic. The consequence is medicine has become a much more defensive and adversarial system. I'm sure that an effort to insure for morbidity from bad outcomes will cause fraud, but it might also save a lot of malpractice litigation costs and reduce the amount of resources spent on defensive medicine, too.
- kragen 2y ago
  > His point is not about compensating for loss. > It's the fact that options laid out on the table with unknowns can be preferable to people than no options, or fewer options. Assuming you're talking about me, that's not exactly my point. I didn't intend to make any assertions about what patients or their families should or should not do, or in general any normative points (though I did use the word "justification", which I shouldn't have). Rather, what I was saying is that businesses that aren't profitable cease to exist, and if the business's product is an experimental medical therapy that could end up killing a substantial fraction of its patients, the business might lose money when those patients' families sue the business. It's fairly predictable that a good fraction of experimental therapies will have this outcome, even if you don't know which ones in advance. Consequently, businesses that don't price it into their business model will, in most cases, go bankrupt after their first few successful therapies, making them unattractive for venture capital. So the high price tag is somewhat predictable, whatever you may think of its moral status. Separately, your comment seems to imply that damages on breach-of-contract and similar civil tort cases are paid to the plaintiff by the state rather than the defendant. That is not correct. They are paid by the defendant if they are paid at all. In the US, you can also file a civil tort case for conversion against someone who stole your car and get awarded damages in the same way.