In this battle over health care, I thought about what the Republican”s points were, and too, what they wanted to have in the new bill. Two of these got me to thinking. First, they wanted to limit the size of rewards given for malpractice suits. Now my thoughts about this covers all the following professions; law enforcement, fire, doctors, hospitals and military personnel of our nation.
We all have heard how in those professions, invisible walls go up when it comes to protecting their own. The excuses given for this are that each employee or professional needs to count on their fellow workers with their lives and livelihoods, and secondly, that the average citizen doesn”t understand the pressure of these jobs, and we are sold that it is so great that mistakes must be overlooked.
I believe the cost of lawsuits against those job holders can be greatly reduced in two ways. First, take down the walls. We, as a nation, need to get rid of the bad apples in all those professions. The greatest way to do this is for co-workers to come forth when screw-up is known to them. They”re endangering innocent citizens, as well as their fellow co-workers, if they don”t. That is just a fact. To protect a co-worker who is not up to the task of the job is not being a rat. It is part of being a true professional. Those who help weed out the rotten apples need to be not only rewarded, but admired. The leadership or governing bodies of all those professions must take a strong, unrelenting stand and demand that their professions be cleaned up. Those within the departments who do not take the correct actions in disclosing un-professional co-workers lower their own standards and become accomplices to the wrong doing should be shown the door along with them. All those positions must have the public”s trust completely. At this point in time, they don”t, and the walls are the reason why. It”s time to bring back the honor, that rightfully belongs to those who have mastered their professions with their skills and protect and help the citizens of this nation, by protecting them from less than honorable actions and skills by a few co-workers.
As to the second issue. To saddle a family with the huge cost of care for anyone harmed by faulty skills, for the life span of a member hurt, is just not right. But, one more thing. It would be a far better and honorable practice, when an error is made, and we all make them, that the person who made the error admitted to it and offers an apology and uses his skills, whenever possible, to help treat the person injured, at no cost to them. Visit the person and offer advice that might lessen the downside of the error. Insurance rates would come down, maybe. But more importantly, it is part of why we have given the high degree of respect to those professions. All we are asking is to earn it.
James Hall grew up in Clearlake Oaks
