If you followed our earlier blog posts, you should know what constitutes medical malpractice and whether you were a victim. If you think you have a legitimate complaint, the next blog posts will tell you how to assert your legal rights and obtain compensation for medical malpractice.
Compensatory Damages
If you have been injured by someone’s negligence, the law gives you the right to compensation. Bringing a medical malpractice lawsuit against a doctor or a hospital is not being vindictive but simply seeking what is legally and rightfully yours for the injury you have suffered. In fact, the law calls awards for malpractice Compensatory Damages, which means just what it says. They are meant to compensate you for the losses you suffered through a doctor’s or hospital’s negligence.
Loss Allocation
Before 1949 many workers, who were injured on the job, received nothing to compensate them for their injuries. If a worker suffered an injury that made it impossible to work, his or her family was reduced to poverty. After 1949 all states had workers’ compensation laws. Employers in each state paid into a fund that took care of injured workers. It paid their medical expenses, rehabilitated them, and paid a pension if they were permanently disabled. The employer pays contributions, as a cost of doing business, whether his employees are injured or not. It is a way to help people, who have been injured through no fault of their own. It is what lawmakers and lawyers call Loss Allocation.
Today, medical malpractice insurance is considered a Loss Allocation like workers’ compensation. It is no more an insult to ask a doctor for compensation for medical malpractice than to ask your employer’s workers’ compensation to compensate you for injuries you receive on the job. A doctors’ textbook on medical malpractice defense advises them to carry adequate malpractice insurance because: “Accidents do happen, and patients do get injured. So it is only humane that funds be available to compensate the victim of your mistake.”
Thousands of patients suffer, due to malpractice, and do not get the compensation they deserve. If you are malpractice victim, or your client is a malpractice victim, contact JD.MD, Inc., today at 800-225-5363. We can provide you with a Comprehensive Screening Report, an initial case evaluation, by a qualified medical reviewer.