Mississippi Injury Lawyer Blog

Senator Durbin's critique of calls for medical malpractice reform

This clip is worth watching as Senator Dick Durbin tears apart the mantra heard from some in Washington D.C. that the first thing we need is medical malpractice reform, not health care reform.

New initiative intended to reduce deadly medication errors

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates that medication errors cause at least one death per day and injure approximately 1.3 million people annually in the United States. Today's Wall Street Journal says a new effort is underway to spread the word about medication errors and offer advice to prevent similar mistakes. Read about the effort here.

Information provided by Robert Kisselburgh, Mississippi Medical Malpractice Attorney

Attorneys beware--watch out for those subrogation liens.

Two days ago, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a summary judgment where a plaintiff's attorney was found liable to the ERISA health plan for settlement funds he disbursed. A fellow blogger, Health Plan Law, has a great discussion of the case here.

For those with personal injury lawsuits, if your health insurance company pays for your medical and you ultimately recover money from the person who caused those injuries, your health insurance company has a subrogation lien for the amount of medical paid. That means you could possibly have to pay the insurance company for the amount it paid for medical expenses you ultimately recovered from the liable party.

In the case above, the client did recover monies and the attorney disbursed the settlement funds without paying the insurance company back for the medical it paid on behalf of the client. The plan ultimately sued the client and attorney for the money. Lesson to all parties. Prior to settling a personal injury case or disbursing funds from a personal injury settlement, make sure you have paid all liens.

Reported by: Robert Kisselburgh, Mississippi Accident Injury Lawyer

Tort reform myths debunked

Anthony Tarricone, president of the American Association of Justice, wrote a good article debunking the top 5 myths regarding medical negligence and the need for more tort reform. If we are going to debate the issue, then let's get the fact straight. The fact is that more tort reform will do nothing to protect those patients injured by a doctor nor reduce the costs of health care. Check out the previous post here to read a great article discussing the cause of increase medical costs.