AMA President Criticizes Current Tort System; Acknowledges Role of Doctor-Owned Medical Malpractice Insurers

In an interview with United Press International, William Plested III, MD, president of the American Medical Association, said that limits on medical tort "pain and suffering" damages are not enough without comprehensive reform of the medical liability system. According to Plested, "The present system focuses on poor outcomes, not how those outcomes happened. A bad outcome is not necessarily negligence. You can do the very best you can and have the very best training and still have a bad outcome, the system puts you at risk for that." In addition, Plested set the record straight about doctor-owned companies when told of ATLA (Association of Trial Lawyers of America) President Ken Suggs' recent comments that doctors and lawyers should stop fighting each other and unite against the medical malpractice insurance companies who keep hiking insurance premiums to push their profits higher. "Do you have any idea what happened with medical malpractice insurance? It's almost totally in the hands of doctor-owned companies; doctors who put together their finances to get a company to give them insurance, because the for-profit insurers all ran," stated Plested. "There is no profit in this; (the insurers) left it. And people who are not out to make a profit, they're just out to protect doctors (via) their own insurance companies, they're the ones who are left." (UPI, 9/1)