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Accountability For Medical Mistakes
Doctors, hospitals and their insurance companies have paid millions of dollars over the last 20 years to maneuver the legislative system to enact laws unfavorable to patients and patients’ advocates, claiming all the while that the legal system that applies to every other business is unfair to them. Should they be treated differently? Is their any reason why they should not be held responsible for their mistakes, like everyone else? Are they in some station above everyone else?
Let’s face it. Doctors and most hospitals are businesses that operate for a profit, not charitable institutions. Now, there is nothing wrong with making a profit. Free market profit driven businesses have made America great and lead to the kind of innovation that makes America the strongest economy on earth. However, profit driven businesses do have a human downside. Sometimes, misguided employers or employees cut corners, take shortcuts, and take unnecessary risks, to ensure a profit. That is just as true in medicine as it is in any other business. What’s worse, in the field of medicine, the public entrusts their health and safety to professionals who make a sacred promise that they will protect them carefully and professionally, without regard to race, creed, color, means, or profit. When they break that promise, they violate a sacred trust to that patient and to the community at large.
Medical mistakes occur in one third of hospital admissions and cost society around $ 17 billion dollars a year. Those who violate the sacred trust to “do no harm” and carefully provide necessary medical care and treatment should be accountable. They should not be above the law.
