Continued Reliance on Custom in Determining Medical Malpractice
نویسنده
چکیده
The Clinton Administration's quest to revamp the nation's system of health care delivery has generated debate on many fronts. Cost, eligibility, scope of coverage, and financing are all vital concerns.1 We examine here a less visible, but no less important, issue: the impact of proposed health care reforms on the processes by which the tort system adjudicates medical malpractice claims. This piece of the health care puzzle deserves attention because reforms of any significance will likely expose serious structural limitations in how the existing system deals with medical malpractice claims. These limitations stem both from tort law's traditional reliance on professional custom as the determinant of the standard of care,2 and from its insistence that the standard thus established be both unitary-applicable to all health care providers and consumers regardless of resources, risk preferences, or knowledge3-and non-waivable by private arrangements between such providers and consumers.4 This approach may have functioned adequately under the simpler conditions of an earlier era,5 but it is increasingly untenable in today's age of significant economic stratification among groups of
منابع مشابه
Universal health care and the continued reliance on custom in determining medical malpractice.
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تاریخ انتشار 2010