Medical Care

The recent article about the large amount of settlements in malpractice claims reveals the inequities in the medical system and how the trial lawyers continue to be getting favorable treatment while the actual delivery of medical care is controlled ("Doctors, hospitals concerned about hefty malpractice awards," Aug. 4). The Sun article highlights that since 2011 there has been $890 million in settlements paid out. Keep in mind that the trail lawyers receive anywhere from 25-to-33 percent of the settlement.

Hospital chain buys surgery centerColumbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. yesterday agreed to buy surgery center operator Medical Care America Inc. for approximately $1.1 billion in stock and assumed debt, in another step in the rapid consolidation of the medical care industry.The proposed merger expands the reach of Louisville, Ky.-based Columbia/HCA, already the nation's biggest hospital chain, by adding 96 outpatient centers.Medical Care America shareholders will receive Columbia/HCA shares worth approximately $30 for each Medical Care share, according to a formula based on the value of Columbia's share price.

A for-profit company the state brought in to provide medical care to Maryland prison inmates has hired far fewer staff than required, and advocates for prisoners say that they have compiled dozens of cases of poor and inadequate care since the new contract took effect July 1. St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services Inc. serves as primary medical care provider for Maryland's 27,000 prisoners and is required under its contract to have 603 full-time staff....

WASHINGTON -- Nonwhite Americans are twice as likely to lack health insurance as whites, and almost one-third of them say they have little or no choice of where they receive medical care, according to a study released yesterday.The survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a national philanthropy group involved in health and social policy research, also found that nonwhite adults were 50 percent more likely than white adults to report problems paying for medical care.The survey was released as Congress is considering cuts in Medicaid for the poor as part of its drive to cut the federal budget deficit.

In a boon to hospitals, patients can be held liable for bills for emergency care they received when they were minors if their parents refused to pay, a divided Maryland Court of Appeals ruled yesterday. "This ruling is critically important for hospitals," said Herbert A. Thaler Jr., lawyer for the hospitals. As a practical matter, he said, the 4-3 ruling largely affects people who turn 18, legal adulthood, within three years of receiving emergency medical care that their parents refused to pay for. The hospital has three years from treatment to file suit.

Baltimore County just got the largest hospital bill it has ever received for the medical care of someone in police custody -- $126,220.06.The bill covers services for a 20-year-old Owings Mills man who was arrested and charged with stealing a Porsche 968 at gunpoint from the lot at a Reisterstown car dealership on Jan. 20.The man tried to hang himself in his cell at the Garrison police station lockup on Jan. 26.According to police spokesman E. Jay Miller,...

WASHINGTON -- The government of the District of Columbia has agreed to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the families of six residents of an institution for the mentally retarded, according to attorneys representing both sides.Under the settlement agreement, to be made public tomorrow, the D.C. government, which admits to no wrongdoing, will pay the families $1.075 million.Federal investigators said the deaths, the subject of an article in today's Los Angeles Times Magazine, constituted the worst example of institutional abuse and neglect in recent U.S. history.

If anyone in Baltimore City or Prince George's County needs medical care, they'd better hope that contributory negligence stands ("Soccer field accident could remake 150 years of Md. injury law," Sept. 18). Baltimore has the nation's worst physician pay, and liability costs in these venues are twice that of the rest of Maryland. Without contributory negligence, a patient could hit himself in the head with a hammer in the waiting room and sue the doctor for head injury. Injury lawyers don't care in the slightest about access to medical care, they want all of us to pay for their ever bigger yachts with higher liability costs.

During the recent presidential primary campaign, the candidates talked frequently about proposals to reduce the 47 million people in this country without health insurance by measures such as expanding eligibility for Medicaid and requiring that individuals buy coverage or pay a fine. What they failed to do is recognize that lack of coverage is merely a symptom of a larger problem: the high cost of medical care, which makes insurance unaffordable for many. U.S. health expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product run around 16 percent, far in excess of any other technologically advanced country.

As the Dec. 3 editorial "The Salvation of St. Joseph" noted, citizens must be vigilant about health care restrictions at Catholic-run hospitals. Catholic hospitals enforce religious directives that can interfere with patient decision-making in unpredictable and sometimes devastating ways. Maryland residents working to establish the state's Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) program, for example, need to learn the local bishop's view of POLST because his view will apply at St. Joseph.