My ongoing mission...

You know, to understand stuff better (and, arguably, on the dark side, to be more right).

So here's The State's overview of the 'capping medical liability' debate. My thoughts:

One of the major problems here is premium increases, right? Could there be other reasons for this? Could the insurance companies be gouging us? I assume they're still making good money. My agent has a nice car.

According to federal figures, South Carolina is the second-highest paying state for obstetrician-gynecologists, and such physicians are the highest-paid in the state. Their average annual wage was $207,870 in 2003.

Subtracting a typical price for obstetrician insurance, as cited by a state Legislative Audit Council report, many of the physicians made more than $170,000 before taxes and expenses, or about five times what the average South Carolinian was paid to work.

So how is insurance costing physicians too much? Did they leave something out?

plaintiffs’ lawyers say physicians do not sanction their own often enough

This seems to be something the doctors should do immediately.

There's no doubt that malpractice suits are too prevalent and often frivolous. However, we need some protection, too.

In one of the sidebars, a bereft mother says:

In my opinion, the patient safety situation has gotten worse since (Lewis) died. There is a very great pressure to cut costs and do things more cheaply. ... There’s pressure to hire people with less and less training. They’re pushing more and more patients through (hospitals) more rapidly.

These are market pressures. So how does the market correct them?

I don't have a lot of conclusions here. I don't pretend to know the answers. From what I do know, I think insurance companies and doctors are making plenty of money. Patients need to be more reasonable about their health care expectations (you can't usually get better, Cadillac care for less money) and should curtail malpractice suits to some degree. Some lawyers are guilty of greed and pushing patients to sue and to sue for more money (to increase the result of their percentage). I wonder what will give...

Help me understand this better (I'm looking at you, especially, Paul, Esquire.)