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I have a bit of a different take on this medical tort law.

If you take away somebody's right to sue a doctor for malpractice - who is going to discipline negligent doctors?

Physicians colleges?

Ha!

Physicians colleges protect their own and seldom have the public interest in mind.

On the flip side:

Sometimes a doctor makes a mistake. A mistake isn't negligence.

Big difference here.

Does somebody have the right to sue a doctor for a mistake?

In a public-system, not really, no. The state make that person whole again because health care is free, and the cost of suing the doctor to society as a whole far outweighs the benefits to the individual.

People have this powerful emotion around retribution. It drives news cycles. If a doctor makes a mistake, and it isn't negligence: what point is there to actually suing the doctor?

In a private health system, the purpose is to force the Doctor to pay for the ongoing healthcare of the person who suffered from the mistake.

In a public system, there's no purpose to it.

You can eliminate a huge amount of lawsuits with a public system.

On the flip side, in a system where patients have no lawsuit rights: negligence creeps right into the system. And it isn't pretty when victims of negligence have no recourse. In this instance, lawsuits have a utility to society: it does the job that physician colleges simply won't do on their own.

I know this is all very nuanced, but if you can check the logic and understand the difference between negligence and a mistake: I think you'll get the point.

lilnubber wrote:

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Mistakes ARE negligence, Leeters.

If you run a red light, you are negligent. You didn't MEAN to run the red light, but you didn't see it. You made a mistake. That's negligence.

Nubber - you and I normally agree, so I'm kind of surprised.

Obligatory fucking Wikipedia excerpt:

Negligence (Lat. negligentia, from neglegere, to neglect, literally "not to pick up") is a legal concept in the common law legal systems usually used to achieve compensation for injuries (not accidents). Negligence is a type of tort or delict (also known as a civil wrong). However, the concept is sometimes used in criminal law as well. "Negligence" is not the same as "carelessness", because someone might be exercising as much care as they are capable of, yet still fall below the level of competence expected of them. It is the opposite of "diligence". It can be generally defined as conduct that is culpable because it falls short of what a reasonable person would do to protect another individual from foreseeable risks of harm. In the words of Lord Blackburn,

"those who go personally or bring property where they know that they or it may come into collision with the persons or property of others have by law a duty cast upon them to use reasonable care and skill to avoid such a collision."^{[citation needed]}

Through civil litigation, if an injured person proves that another person acted negligently to cause his injury, he can recover damages to compensate for his harm. Proving a case for negligence can potentially entitle the injured plaintiff to compensation for harm to their body, property, mental well-being, financial status, or intimate relationships. However, because negligence cases are very fact-specific, this general definition does not fully explain the concept of when the law will require one person to compensate another for losses caused by accidental injury. Further, the law of negligence at common law is only one aspect of the law of liability. Although resulting damages must be proven in order to recover compensation in a negligence action, the nature and extent of those damages are not the primary focus of negligence cases.

If I'm helping to delivering a baby, which is incredibly fucking hard to do (you have no idea), and in spite of all my efforts, I injure the poor baby while trying to save it's life - that isn't negligence. It just isn't.

If I'm helping to deliver a baby, and I willfully injure that kid - by (for instance) repeating a procedure which had failed 10 times before instead of having tried a different way - I'm negligent.

Two totally different concepts.

AND incidentally: why it's so fucking hard to find a doctor in the US willing to deliver babies. It is extremely difficult and highly litigious.

Society doesn't benefit when a parent, bent on retribution, drives doctors out of the market.

Society doesn't benefit when a physicians college, bent on defending their own, blindly hides and protects willfully negligent doctors.

There has to be balance.