As a medical professional, I want to thank Governor Ron DeSantis for vetoing legislation earlier this year that could have negatively impacted me and all my peers and colleagues. The legislation I am referring to relates to lawsuits for pain and suffering associated with injuries or death from medical malpractice.
In Florida, in legitimate cases of medical malpractice, direct family members can sue for economic damages. Permitting lawsuits for pain and suffering is a moving target based on emotion rather than fact, and generally speaking, the pain and suffering aspect of jury awards contributes to the windfalls that are so often repeated in the news and touted on billboards.
Subscribe to The Florida Jolt Newsletter!
But let me explain why this is not a good idea. Opening up malpractice suits to pain and suffering claims will cause lawsuits to increase significantly and destroy any predictability for malpractice insurance models. This will cause insurance rates for doctors, nurses, and hospitals to explode and contribute to many health care professionals from even desiring to practice in Florida any longer. This means that wait times will grow longer and the quality of care will suffer significantly, particularly in rural areas.
Pain and suffering claims are a terrible idea. If this had become law, the cost of healthcare due to this new layer of extreme litigiousness could have gone sky high. That would have impacted our seniors on fixed incomes and our working families, who are already facing a cost-of-living crisis.
So again, what the governor did was right, but we need to do more. Ideally, very shortly, the legislature should take steps to curb the third-party financing of lawsuits. This rather dubious investment strategy is mainly utilized by large-scale investment funds, many of which are international, and is precisely what it sounds like. These groups step in to pay early benefits to a plaintiff in exchange for their commitment to pay them back with interest once a settlement is achieved or a judgment is awarded. There is tremendous pressure from these groups for plaintiffs to stick with litigation and push for the maximum, even when that sometimes would not make sense for either party. And let’s face it, juries need to know if the plaintiff is going to benefit from an award or whether the prize is going to be eaten up by a large-scale corporate financier.
Thus, I thank the governor for protecting doctors, nurses, and taxpayers and urge him and the legislature to consider disclosing third-party financing of lawsuits.
Other stories you may want to read:
