Preston, J.G.

By JG Preston
Protect Consumer Justice

Here’s how I thought life insurance worked:

1) I buy a life insurance policy.
2) I pay my premiums under the terms of the policy.
3) I die.
4) My beneficiary receives a check for the benefit amount specified in the policy.

Silly me. I forgot the insurance company’s purpose is to make money, even if it means my beneficiary doesn’t receive the benefit right away.

By J.G. Preston
Protect Consumer Justice

A car-pedestrian crash with tragic consequences in suburban San Francisco may bring about safer crosswalks in California, after a San Mateo County jury this month awarded more than $12 million in damages in a civil trial.

Emily Liou was in a marked crosswalk at an intersection without a traffic signal on State Route 82 (El Camino Real) in Millbrae when she was struck by a southbound car.  Liou, who was 17 years old at the time of the crash in 2006, suffered extensive brain damage and is left in a permanent vegetative state.  She has required 24-hour care from the time she was placed in the ambulance and will continue to require such care for the rest of her shortened life.

Her attorneys, Richard Schoenberger and Doug Saeltzer, provided evidence that the marked crosswalk, intended to provide more safety for pedestrians, actually left Liou less safe.

By JG Preston
Protect Consumer Justice

Forbes magazine staff writer David Whelan opens a recent blog post with this sentence:

Survey results published in the Archives of Internal Medicine this week found that 91% of physicians claim they run unnecessary tests on patients for fear of being sued if they don’t.

Whelan goes on to conclude:

If lawsuits are rarely frivolous, as lawyers claim, why would 91% of doctors admit in a survey that they order unnecessary tests to avoid being sued?

By J.G. Preston
Protect Consumer Justice

One of the main topics in the aftermath of the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico has been the extent of BP’s liability to compensate those who have been harmed.  The tone of that discussion changed Wednesday, when the company agreed to create a $20 billion fund to pay damage claims for Gulf Coast residents.  Until then, BP’s liability could have been limited, because under federal law covering the oil industry, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the “total of liability . . . with respect to each incident shall not exceed for an offshore facility except a deepwater port, the total of all removal costs plus $75,000,000.”

University of Chicago law professor Richard A. Epstein said BP likely would have had to pay more than $75 million anyway:

J.G Preston
Protect Consumer Justice

Patient advocates have long argued that the best way to reduce the number of medical negligence lawsuits is not by infringing on the rights of victims to seek compensation for their injuries through the civil justice system but by reducing the number of victims.  A new report from RAND Corporation, the non-profit research group, set out to determine if there is a relationship between improvements in patient safety and the amount of malpractice suits.

By J.G. Preston
Protect Consumer Justice

What’s taking the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) so long to implement a program to prevent hospital acquired infections?  That’s what Consumers Union has been trying to find out since December, but the watchdog group isn’t getting answers.

J.G. Preston
Protect Consumer Justice

“My best guess is that they want me dead as soon as possible….They know that the premiums I pay will never cover how much they’ll spend on me.”

Those were the words of Bob Iritano in a conversation with Los Angeles Times business columnist David Lazarus.  Iritano has terminal cancer, and Lazarus went on to write about how Iritano’s health insurer, Health Net, decided not to cover the treatment that could extend his life.

Iritano was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic sarcoma in February 2007.  He underwent chemotherapy shortly afterward, but an allergic reaction almost killed him.  Iritano was hospitalized for two weeks.

By J.G. Preston

You thought the economy was horrible in 2009? Then you must not work for Big Insurance.

A group called Health Care for America Now (HCAN) looked at the financial reports of the five largest U.S. health insurance companies and found their combined profit rose 56% in 2009.  According to HCAN’s report, the five companies involved had a combined profit of almost $12.2 billion, compared to about $7.8 billion in 2008.

By J.G. Preston

Here are statistics for three jurisdictions.  See if you can figure out which ones put limits on damage awards to victims of medical negligence during that time period and which ones–if any–didn’t.

Jurisdiction A: Medical malpractice suits dropped 54% from 2001 to 2004

Jurisdiction B: Medical malpractice suits dropped 49% from 2002 to 2009

Jurisdiction C: Medical malpractice suits dropped 45% from 2000 to 2008

Perhaps you’ve been told there’s an explosion of medical malpractice suits that can be reduced only by “tort reform” implementations of damage caps…in which case you might be inclined to think all three of these jurisdictions must have implemented caps in order to produce such eye-popping results.

Jurisdiction A is Harris County, Texas (where Houston is).  Tort reform apologists there attribute the decline to damage caps passed in Texas in 2003.

By J.G. Preston
Protect Consumer Justice

California may have smoke-free air, but the state has failed on other key measures in the fight against Big Tobacco, according to a new report by the American Lung Association.

The state’s tobacco tax of 87 cents per pack ranks 32nd in the nation, and makes it one of only four states in the U.S. that has not raised its levy in more than a decade.

California was faulted for its scattershot efforts to provide help to smokers trying to quit, in particular its lack of any mandate that private insurers cover smoking cessation efforts.