"They" are the Cause

Ask people who they hold responsible for the medical malpractice crisis and attorneys will be somewhere in the answer.

Organized Medicine should get a public relations award for creative obfuscation. Like a parlor magician who diverts attention with one hand and performs the trick with the other, Organized Medicine has diverted most public scrutiny from themselves to a very accessible target – attorneys.

There are 3 things readers should know about this issue:
1. Attorneys are NOT the cause of the medical malpractice crisis.
2. Attorneys can never contribute to the solution of that crisis.
3. I am neither a paid or unpaid advocate for the ATAA.

A solution for a social problem must begin with identifying the root cause of that problem. Just because the AMA says attorneys are the primary cause of the medical malpractice crisis does NOT make it true.

Doctors are the cause of the medical malpractice crisis – and – doctors are the only cure for that crisis.

One of the greatest impediments to solving the medical malpractice crisis is that doctors have been convinced they are not the primary cause of that social reality. Most doctors know far too little of the history of their own profession, particularly that history pertaining to the era of “Modern Medicine.”

A “walk down memory lane” through the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) should disabuse them of the notion that anyone else is the cause of their problem. Read the JAMA, as I have done, from 1949 – 2003. The stark contrast between AMA pronouncements in the early decades of that period and current declarations are illuminating.

AMA proclamations in those early years of post WWII Modern Medicine were those of a true profession:
“Doctors are the best judge of other doctors.”
“We owe it to the public to judge ourselves.”
“If we don’t do it, someone else will.”
“The most logical place to apprehend the incompetent physician is in the hospital.”
And the best one is:
“The only act in medical practice which may properly be termed “malpractice” is
negligence in the care of a patient.”

Idealistic rhetoric rears its ugly head. Literature regarding medical malpractice over the last forty years has a vast quantity of generalities and platitudes, with negligible specifics to find a tangible solution.

“Doctors are the best judge of other doctors” is a truism.
“Doctors do not know how to judge other doctors” is a reality.

Society has been left with that sad reality, but it is not recognized in medical literature. What’s more, there is no authority or media watch-dog to question it.