Recent News
Stefanik says Republican health care plan is coming
U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik spoke with members of the Medical Society of the State of New York Saturday in Lake Placid about a Republican-led effort to reform the Affordable Care Act. The Mirror Lake Inn’s conference room was filled with around two dozen doctors and...
Offer SGR Solutions Not Complaints
The American Medical Association (AMA) is doing a disservice by not weighing in on how to pay for repealing the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula for physician reimbursement under Medicare, a member of Congress said Thursday. During the second day of a hearing on...
Congressman to AMA: Offer SGR Solutions Not Complaints
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Mass. Malpractice Reforms Offer Faster, More Open Process For Injured Patients
When a woman had gall bladder surgery at a Massachusetts hospital in 2013, doctors noticed something suspicious on a CT scan that they thought could be ovarian cancer. But the recommendation that the patient get a pelvic ultrasound fell through the cracks. Months...
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s State of the State address
[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_column_text]Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, members of the Legislature, members of the Board of Public Works, justices of the Supreme Court of Appeals, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and my fellow West Virginians. Forty years...
California’s Proposition 46 and the Uncertain Future of Medical Malpractice Liability Reform
On November 4, 2014, Californians voted against Proposition 46, an unprecedented statewide ballot initiative that would have, among other things, raised the $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages to $1.1 million and indexed it to the rate of inflation in future years....
When Is It About Money? Why Is It About Time?
Crisis, it is said, means both danger and opportunity. In medical liability reform, however, greater opportunity may lie in noncrisis. In this issue of JAMA, Mello and colleagues offer data suggesting that no crisis of the conventional sort currently exists in the...
Malpractice Insurance Premiums Nudge Down Again
For the seventh straight year, malpractice insurance premiums have decreased for three bellwether specialties, and even for sticker-shocked obstetrician-gynecologists on Long Island in New York, according to an annual premium survey released this week by Medical...
Doctors order unnecessary tests without even realizing it
Physicians order unnecessary tests and procedures to inoculate themselves from legal liability more than they realize, according to a new survey of physicians at several hospitals in one Massachusetts health system. Nearly a third of the orders that the surveyed...
Poorly Crafted State Proposition 46 Puts Doctors on Defense
The lawyers who put together and funded Proposition 46 might have been too clever for their own good. The main motivation for the measure is inescapably clear: to raise the ceiling on “noneconomic damages” in medical malpractice lawsuits — in plain language, “pain and...