Doctors Protest Too Much!

To the editor:

A local physician wrote lamenting the cost of health care in the country and the lack of predictability for doctors who commit malpractice and find themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit, and advocating a separate system of justice for doctors that is being promoted by the health care industry without any acceptance at all by consumers or constitutionalists (Advocate Letters from Readers, April 4).

The writer fails to inform the reader that Connecticut's recent adoption of reform legislation is working, and that the problem that physicians unjustifiably experience is price-gouging by their own malpractice insurers.

When a malpractice insurer seeks to raise rates unjustifiably, both the doctors and the consumers suffer. Doctors suffer if they pay increased premiums. Consumers suffer because the doctors usually blame them and their lawyers, and place a constitutionally mandated system in the cross-hairs of legislative zealots.

Recently, both the Connecticut Medical Society and the Fairfield County Medical Society ran from a prior-rate approval battle, apparently willing to accept another 12 percent rate increase rather than fight an insurance company. Fortunately for the citizens of Connecticut, the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association came to the rescue and intervened in the hearing before the insurance commissioner's hearing officer, and the rate increase was denied. The doctors have been told that the medical society was protecting their interest. That is untrue.

Significantly, the writer also distorts the reality of the existing system. There is no study that proves that doctors are held to any standard other than the "prevailing standard of care" when judged in court. Moreover, our constitutionally mandated system of jury trials applies to everyone and every industry. No one suggests that juries are incapable of understanding the evidence in other technical and scientific areas. They even make life and death decisions in death penalty cases.

Stewart M. Casper

Stamford

The writer is an attorney.


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