Health Crisis, Vol. 2: The Lawyers

And I thought political commercials were annoying.

If any of you own a television, odds are you’ve seen the tsunami of trial attorney commercials soliciting potential victims of the health crisis.  This is to be expected, annoying as it is.  But the disturbing news is the report that people are being told not to cooperate with investigators by their attorneys.

There is a line between attorneys providing the best legal defense possible and attorneys putting the unbridled greed of big settlements before what is best for a person’s health.  And a few of our local attorneys have sprinted across that line. 

The most obnoxious quote from one of the many commercials that I’m looking forward to deleting from my TiVo has to be the instructions “don’t delay.  Your time to file a claim could be winding down.”  A far more accurate line would be “call now because I need a new BMW and I don’t want you calling anyone else.”

One insider said “This entire process has damaged a lot of good doctors and it will no doubt will set healthcare in Nevada back at least a decade.  It has hurt the doctor/patient trust factor, it has created both legitimate questions for patients and some less legitimate panic and demagoguery.”

It is true that this has been a breakdown of medical ethics on a scale that Nevada has never seen.  But that’s for my next post.  This post covers another legitimate issue with this crisis, which is the panic that has been spread by the attorneys chasing a big paycheck.  It is almost as disgusting as the crime itself.

Leave it to my sources to put it best: “There are a lot of good trial lawyers…There are a lot of good doctors.  There are scumbags and scam artists in both professions and unfortunately both have stolen the news coverage on this issue.”