Oh Those Frivolous Lawsuits

From the Cincinnati Post/Dayton Daily News

 

Monday, July 23, 2007

Docs don't have to be insured

By Anthony Gottschlich

 

FAILURE TO DISCLOSE BRINGS PENALTY

Failure to disclose a lack of malpractice insurance isn't a crime in Ohio, but it's subject to disciplinary action by the State Medical Board of Ohio. Penalties include a reprimand up to a permanent revocation of the physician's medical license.

DAYTON - Driving a car is enough of a risk that Ohio requires its motorists to carry liability insurance.
But that same reasoning doesn't apply to another life-and-death endeavor: the practice of medicine. There's no law requiring physicians to carry professional liability insurance.

Patrick Wilson found that out after his 44-year-old wife died following her second weight loss surgery in 2003 at Sycamore Hospital in Miamisburg.

Wilson tried to sue the surgeon who performed the operation, Dr. David J. Fallang of the Surgical Weight Loss Center in Dayton, but his lawyer gave up when he discovered Fallang didn't have malpractice insurance and had shielded his assets from civil judgments.

"Dr. Fallang has succeeded in making himself judgment-proof," attorney J. Pierre Tismo of Dyer, Garofalo, Mann & Schultz wrote to Wilson.

While malpractice insurance isn't required, Ohio law mandates that physicians who lack the insurance inform patients in writing and obtain a signed consent form prior to treatment in non-emergency cases.

Fallang, who's been sued 22 times in Butler and Montgomery counties for malpractice since 1991, didn't do that.

"I never knew such a statute existed," Fallang, 57, said from his office at Elizabeth Place, the former St. Elizabeth's Hospital.

This brilliant surgeon's excuse?

The Middletown resident admits "I'm not perfect," but he doesn't believe any of the cases against him involved malpractice. He said the suits were largely manufactured by the "medical malpractice lawsuit industry."

Those damn lawyers, killing patients, just so that the family can become wealthy.

 

"To be perfectly blunt, I don't believe that it's my responsibility to make my patients rich if there should be an adverse occurrence," Fallang said. "My responsibility is to take the best medical care of them that I know how."

 

Now, just about anything can go wrong in any kind of procedure. You know that as a patient going into whatever you are going into. For example, I'm about to have major surgery. I'm not planning on suing my surgeon. I have the utmost faith in him as an upstanding guy who would in fact take the best medical care of me that he knows how. That's cool. And it doesn't mean that something couldn't go wrong, I know that. But unfortunately, not all surgeons are like him. And at the expense of the patients, those few surgeons really fuck it up for the rest of them, making it sound like anything that is actual malpractice, gross negligence, whatever is just some greedy ass person who was willing to die or be deformed or maimed or disabled for life to line their pockets with some doctor's duckets.  I know surgeons are among the top 25 paid professions in the country, they are not stupid, so why do they buy into the insurance industry racket and place the patient at the heart of the problem?

Happy Birthday ADA!

Today marks the 17 year anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Almost two decades later and still so far to go.  

I Don't Think I Want to Know the Answer

From The Washington Post

 

In Over Your Head? Ask Your Body 

By January W. Payne

Tuesday, July 24, 2007; Page HE01

 

"The issue of feeling out of control is probably the single most important universal stressor," said David Baron, chairman of the department of psychiatry at the Temple University School of Medicine.

 

So, I have little control over many things, which is apparently important. OK, I know it is important because I struggle with it every moment of every day.  It is part and parcel of having any kind of disability. Damn it, how do you let go of control when you have no option? While simultaneously not freaking out?  You have to grab tight to whatever you can muster control over, but damn it takes alot of getting used to. Advice?

 

Rolling On

I am reading Martha Stewart bridal magazine. Yes you read that right. I am sitting in an airport, listening to announcements of flights to Paris, Madrid, anywhere. I watch people go by with what is obviously many of their worldly possessions on their backs and dragging along behind them. And I can't take it. I can't be in this airport, watching this life go by, and know that my life isn't about to change. I'm not about to meet a group of people my age, who share my passion and faith and bleeding heart and DRIVE and lack of doubt and hope. No possible new best friends waiting across the concourse. No life changing experiences waiting half way across the world. Isn't that what travel is for? Aren't airports just conduits for life altering experiences? If not, I'm not sure what to do in one.

So I buy Martha Stewart Bride. To my defense, I am getting married and it has been a 7 year courtship and to date 13 month engagement with one month of ring to show for it, and that's IT. But that's because I so don't care. "Eh" has always been my general feeling about marriage. Growing up I just figured that I wouldn't have a husband (what would have happened to him was fuzzy, just that he wasn't there anymore and it was me and my kids). I thought if I did get married it would be just like one of the dozens of weddings I went to as the kid of a Eastern European folk music group (a must at most Orthodox weddings). I saw myself in each bride, and man did I love to dance with her. But still.... I never really saw it for me.

Then my brother got married. He had the wedding I had always imagined (though a tad short of the traditional 3 day Serbian gala). Married at our church, reception in our backyard where my mom and us kids grew up in. Lamb roast, lots of slivovitza, and lots of music and dancing (again the traditional kind). So, that happened and I didn't need that anymore. So that left me with nothing. I searched: what would be perfect for us? Most weddings I attended I wanted to run out of the room screaming. And if I had been the bride, I guarantee I would have run down the aisle. I would have waited until that moment and I would have bolted. But I have been to a couple that were so them, so the bride and groom, so non-traditional and fun that I thought: why the hell not? I can do whatever I want. Ooooooooo, what a dangerous thought process. It tends to turn into paralization. I came up with some ideas, mainly a destination wedding to Costa Rica to keep down the cost, to show my love a place that I loved, be able to invite some Central American friends who I haven't seen forever, and could you beat the price? I mean, who would go to that wedding? Short guest list anyone? And for those who did go, it would be the closest family members and friends and it would be fairly easy for them to get around (in comparison to the other beautiful destinations I had in mind). But that plan turned out to be too popular. And the reality set in that his parents probably wouldn't leave the state, let alone the country for a wedding, and this isn't all about me, it's about us.

So I put if off, put it off. Then my dad died. Now I see. Now I see the importance of it all. Having something to celebrate in life. Coming together with those you love in a way that is beautiful. Being happy. Celebrate. That word has taken on a whole different meaning in the past few weeks. I didn't think that I would be able to crack a smile for.... I have no idea how long. Then my Godmother forced us to buy a ring. And there we were, celebrating together already. Celebrating our love for each other, all around. Something positive amongst such negativity. So maybe that's why I bought the magazine. I've railed against such things for so long, that now, now that what is normal....isn't. Well, maybe its time to turn the tables. Might as well give it a try. Of course I haven't been able to enjoy it, and I feel very ill looking at it, holding it, thinking that any stranger might think its mine (though the clerk who sold it to me complimented me on my ring), but I think that will pass and I will be able to indulge in fantasy for a while. When we first bought the ring (the diamond ring, oh my god the diamond ring (its vintage but still)) I almost threw up multiple times in the first few hours. I would look at it and couldn't believe the amount of money I was carrying on my finger. How many children could be immunized with that dough? How many wells built? How many microloans given? How many retired underground gun running revolutionaries from developing countries could buy a slice of peace with those $400? I've obviously have not been very good at wishing for things for myself over the years.

So here's the bright side (and trust me, with how much I've walked through concourses feeling less and less like a real person, today, this is a wonderfully bright side), unlike other airport experiences in the recent past, I don't have a gimpy, though less gimpy than me, 70 something year old 4' 11" woman pushing me in a wheelchair because I can't stand. No extremely uncomfortable woman has to pat me down with plastic gloves as I sit in the chair, holding up the rest of the busy busy busy world in their bare socks.
And now its time to board the plane. Back to my home, my routine, my lackluster existence that I wish no one else had to be subjected to. I could handle it, but I don't want to force others to handle me. I know this is an ablist thought, this feeling of being a burden to all who surround me, but there it is. At least I'm not ready for that plane to crash yet.