By BLYTHE BERNHARD The Orange County Register http://www.ocregister.com In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Bush said he wants “to protect good doctors from junk lawsuits” through changes in the medical malpractice system. Bush has touted a nationwide cap on malpractice awards for pain and suffering. The cap is modeled after a law that’s […]

By John Bellatti M.D. Home Rumors of my retirement are much exaggerated. I am an orthopedic surgeon in my 20th year of practice here in Kona. I read the Jan. 17 article in a Big Island newspaper on the M.D. shortage with great interest, including “don’t fracture a bone in Kona because there’s not an […]

http://www.newsobserver.com North Carolina, heal thyself. That’s a depressingly fitting admonition in many rural (and some urbanized) parts of the state, where physicians are in short supply. Thanks to the N.C. Institute of Medicine, the legislature has a decent road map for improving the situation. A number of state agencies and health nonprofits have made the […]

By BOB OKON Staff writer http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com Illinois doctors have hired Theodore Olson, former solicitor general of the United States, to aid them in a legal showdown over the future of tort reform. As solicitor general for President Bush from 2001 to 2004, Olson supervised government litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Illinois State Medical […]

http://www.insurancejournal.com “Steady and sustained growth,” is how Vermont officials described 2006’s final tally for captive insurance as 37 new captive insurance entities were licensed. New to the nation’s largest captive insurer domicile, include such well-known companies as Starbucks Corp., McGraw-Hill, Principal Financial Group, Ameren and Aegon. According to the Vermont Department of Banking, Insurance, Securities […]

By SUSAN ALLEN Staff Writer http://www.rutlandherald.com Many Vermont physicians are concerned about bureaucratic hassles that interfere with patient care, low reimbursement rates and other problems they face in trying to provide medical care, according to an informal survey of 300 of Vermont’s primary care doctors. So significant are the challenges, the survey found, that some […]

By MIKE KELLER http://www.sunherald.com A recent Mississippi Supreme Court ruling could clear the way to make medical procedures public if patients are late to pay their doctor bills, a lawyer on the case said. “If you don’t pay your doctor’s bill, your medical privilege is waived,” said Frank Russell, a former Tupelo judge who represented […]

Nashville Business Journal by Erin Lawley http://nashville.bizjournals.com After years of legislative frustration, the Tennessee Medical Association is deploying a new tactic aimed at turning a medical liability reform bill into law. The organization has started an online and mail-in petition targeting supporters of medical liability reform. It plans to gather several thousand signatures and give […]

http://www.exduco.net An analysis of court settlements of medical malpractice cases in Texas and Florida shows that a reform plan known as “Early Offers” has strong advantages compared to the present tort system. Jeffrey O’Connell, professor of law at the University of Virginia, and colleagues W. Kip Viscusi and Joni Hersch, both now at Vanderbilt University, […]