Posted 5/09/2004 04:14:00 PM by Douglas

The death of mankind, but only in America. Drugs, earthquakes, war, AIDS, cancer? No. Insurance companies and their lawyers. Small town doctors in Ohio can't afford exorbitant malpractice insurance, so after three generations of delivering babies, they're hanging up their hot water and towels for some plain old stethoscopes.

Perhaps one day the children of family physicians Jim Schwieterman, MD, and Tom Schwieterman, MD, will pick up where medical liability rates have forced the brothers to leave off.

The duo is scheduled to deliver their last baby in September, stopping a more than 100-year run of their family bringing children into the world in Mercer County, Ohio.

And in an ending that wouldn't have been more perfect if Hollywood had written the script, the brothers' last delivery will be the baby of a woman their father delivered.

Their grandfather delivered the woman's mother. And the doctors' great-grandfather who founded the Maria Stein, Ohio, family practice, delivered the woman's grandmother.

This is the price we all pay for this kind of crap.

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And in another article shamelessly poached from overlawyered.com, this is enough to make anyone fume:

In May 1995, Dawn Goodson's car was rear-ended by a car insured by American Standard. Fourteen months later, in July 1996, Goodson and her children spent $8,000 on a chiropractor. Goodson submitted an insurance claim three months later.

You might imagine a wee bit of skepticism on the part of the insurance company. Goodson hadn't gone through American Standard's PPO, which meant that the bills were higher than they would have been; moreover, American Standard was skeptical that a chiropractor's 1996 treatment for three individuals was medically necessary as a result of the 1995 accident, and asked for an independent medical evaluation. Nevertheless, American Standard, after initially offering to pay part of the bill, eventually paid the full medical bills in April 1998.

Not good enough: Goodson sued three months later, seeking damages for "emotional distress." A jury awarded $75,000, and doubled it with $75,000 of punitive damages.

The end isn't near. It's hear. Thankfully, I don't have to pay for Colorado insurance. Yet.