Sunshine state

What a day. SIX neuro consults! None of them straightforward! One of them in Greek !

I remember the time, a few months ago, when doing three consults in a day would give me cerebral edema. Now I just have numbness and essential tremor! This MD thing is really happening.

In that vein, let's indulge in some sarcastic snarkiness. Kevin, M.D. links to the story of the dueling Florida ballot initiatives, pitting doctor against lawyer:

Trial lawyers want to open up records detailing patients harmed in hospitals, limit what doctors can charge for services and strip the license of any medical doctor found to have committed three or more cases of medical malpractice.

The doctors want to limit how much lawyers can make.

People give lawyers such a bad rap. Sure, trial lawyers' salaries continue to rise, as physicians' salaries fall and medical costs spiral out of control due to "defensive medicine." Sure, lawyers use emotional manipulation to turn juries against scientific and statistical principles.

But you can't deny they're doing the public a big favor here, by taking negligent doctors off the wards. Removing physicians with three suits against them is not even in the lawyers' best interests -- they're selflessly depriving themselves of future clients! But if you liked defensive medicine before, wait until you see how many diagnostic tests are ordered by a doc with two strikes.

Maybe the trial lawyers heard that, in many specialties, the average doctor is sued two or three times over the course of a career. So if voters pass the new ballot initiative, all surviving docs will be above average (or, fresh out of residency).

As for that crusade to cap doctors' reimbursements, well, that's precious. Think how much money the patients will save when doctors have no financial incentive to spend time with them. It does makes me wonder, though, why the lawyers are trying to fight the physician inititive to cap attorney fees. Aren't we all just looking out for the patients? Haven't they suffered enough?

I guess the big difference between physicians and lawyers is: lawyers aren't afraid to use their legal expertise to help themselves and hurt doctors. Most doctors, on the other hand, recoil at the thought of withholding care for attorneys. Or, you know, going Shakespearean.

At least now it's the in voters' hands. And things always work out swell when Floridians go to the polls!