Lost Compensation

Medical Malpractice Tort Reform in Texas -- good or bad?

Over at epluribus media, there is an interesting article on the impact of Texas tort reform on the number of practicing physicians in Texas.  Quick background: tort reform was passed in Texas in 2003 in an attempt to limit the burden of rising medical malpractice insurance premiums on physicians. The medical lobby’s logic follows that passing tort reform would make Texas more “doctor friendly” and thereby improve quality of, and access to, patient care.

But has it? The article cites statistics on the number of physicians, new license applications, and number of patient lawsuits (taken from the University of Texas System).  The number of physicians is up, but the growth rate of same is down: this does not bolster the original argument for tort reform – that physicians are going to come to Texas in droves, improving access to and quality of care.

Conversely, the number of lawsuits is down. For sake of debate, are the lawsuits down because otherwise injured patients cannot find an attorney interested in taking up the fight, given the cap on damages? Or, do the injured say “I’m injured, but the pain of the struggle is not worth what I can recover?” If either of these is true, then we have done nothing more than transferred wealth from the backs of the bruised to the wallets of: (a) the doctors, if premiums have decreased, (b) the insurance companies, if profits have increased as a result of tort reform (I am too busy to check on this), or (c) both.  Not terribly palatable, from a public policy perspective.

Moreover, the lack of penalty (e.g., increased premiums on poor doctors) no longer serves as a closed loop means of feedback which would otherwise encourage docs to clean up or ship out.  Quality of care in this case deteriorates.

The questions which I will continue to ponder:

(1) Should government legislate malpractice damages caps (ie. the front-end)?

(2) Or should they legislate insurance premiums (ie. the back-end)?

(3) Or stay out of it all together, and let free markets reign?

(4) How do we know when govt. interdiction in the medical malpractice insurance markets is working or not? And if we eventually come down to “not”, what will it take for the govt to step aside and the market find steady state?

I see arguments for both sides. Free market theorists argue that the most lawsuits will concentrate on the poor doctors, who accordingly are driven from the market or improve their quality of care. Physicians and Insurers say that tort reform makes for a more favorable environment to deliver care, and therefore will improve access to care, such as in rural areas (as mentioned in the article). Both sides argue that patients win.

I for one sincerely hope this issue continues to draw scrutiny. The light of day will drive accountability, and let us all know if mistakes were made, and if so, how/when to adjust course.  I suspect the solutions are as complicated as the problem itself.

Bin Laden in Maine

On Halloween, a prominent Maine attorney, and former gubenatorial candidate, Thomas Connally was arrested at gunpoint at a highway construction site in Maine (Portland, maybe?).  Evidently celebrating Halloween, Mr. Connally was dressed as Osama bin Laden and carrying a toy gun.

Let me see if I have this sequence of events correct.

OBL escapes the CIA in the 1990's.
He eludes capture from the full force of US ground troops and aerial assault in the tribal regions of Afghanistan.
And he is just going to show up at a dig in Maine?

Wow.  I suspect the troopers are going to say something along the lines that it was the toy gun that was the issue.

Building a Clock to Tell Time

A colleague recently pointed me to a blog (Make Marketing History) detailing the flaws typically seen in technical product marketing.  As a reformed marketing exec hailing from the technical world, I can attest that this person is right on.  What makes tech marketing poor is that the technical marketer is typically too focused on how cool their feature is, that surely they have to explain how it works.  Nope.  Don't care.

I do not need to know how to build a clock in order to tell the time (BENEFIT).

This is why technical manuals are long, unread, and therefore, irrelevant in improving the client experience.

How does this relate to Lost Compensation?  After all, "The LC" provides expert economic consulting to injury litigators, not technical gadgets.  And yet, simplicity and clarity are just as relevant.

One must capture the interest of the audience before one can even hope to capture the sale, and to do so, one must communicate simply and concisely.  It's not about "dumbing down" the message:  that incorrectly implies the audience is somehow flawed intellectually.  It is about distilling the message.  A one page glossy summarizes an answer to one simple question:  "Why the hell should I buy your flippin' product (or service)?"  If you cannot answer that, start over.  A 3-page Getting Started Guide anticipates your needs and addresses them quickly -- where on earth would you find help in an 87-page User Manual?  Would you even pick it up and thumb to the TOC?

Soon, very soon, we are launching our new website.  The message will be distilled, and the benefits of working with us more clearly in focus.  We will communicate what makes us unique, and why you should care (ie, how that uniqueness benefits you).

Until then...