Dear Editor:
The medical profession is currently attempting to promote a plan that would limit malpractice cases to a maximum compensation level of $250,000. Doctors claim that rising insurance premiums as high as $100,000 a year are causing a drastic hardship on men of medicine. It is pointed out that a young man or woman just beginning a practice would need considerable time to merely defray the enormous expense entailed in acquiring an education in medicine and to add to this burden with the additional peril of a gigantic lawsuit would be calamitous.
To develop an honest and objective perspective relative to the plight of the doctor does, indeed, enable one to appreciate and to empathize with the physician for, on the whole, he is a dedicated and well-intentioned healer, a man of honor intent on serving humanity.
However, many doctors do not seem to believe that, in order to have the general public show a sympathy for their plight, the doctors must manifest far more consideration for the patient than has been shown until now. Let us take Medicare, for instance, where the doctor if not agreeing to take a case on assignment, is free to disregard the Medicare approved cost of care and may charge the patient up to 115 percent of the Medicare approved amount. Likewise, in regard to Medicaid, the doctor, again, may accept or reject a Medicaid patient.
It is at this point that we must truly appreciate those physicians who do cooperate with the patient, particularly the indigent ones, by accepting Medicare approved costs and Medicaid cases. In addition and in fairness, it must be conceded that some physicians with authentic hardship status must be afforded a degree of leeway.
Nevertheless, in a significantly large number of instances, it would seem that the medical profession is assuming a deplorably insensitive stand in relation to the needs of the patient.
For the doctors to expect the legislature and the public to grant them remedies for their ailments, they must recognize that understanding must be shown to the patient. It appears that the dictum of the medical profession is to receive but not to give.
Howard Lawson