{"id":344,"date":"2005-03-28T12:20:09","date_gmt":"2005-03-28T16:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/benadida\/2005\/03\/28\/russian-roulette-society\/"},"modified":"2005-03-28T12:20:09","modified_gmt":"2005-03-28T16:20:09","slug":"russian-roulette-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/2005\/03\/28\/russian-roulette-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Roulette Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

A while ago, I served on a jury in a civil case concerning a car accident. The plaintiff incurred tens of thousands of dollars in medical expenses and lost wages. The defendent was found liable as he clearly caused the accident. Deliberation was quick, as there wasn’t a whole lot to discuss. But there was one issue we couldn’t rule on, one issue which truly angers me. The defendent’s fees were not picked up by her insurance, because her insurance had been cancelled, because, once she proved unable to fulfill her duties because of post-accident trauma and pain, her large-company employer fired her retroactively to the day before the accident<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As a close friend would say, “that’s messed up.” But what’s really messed up is that we have a system that regularly accepts such events as inevitabilities. 40 Million people without insurance. And out of those who do have insurance, most will not be able to use it for some weird technical reason, like being fired retroactively. As a consequence, individuals are left with the bill. Certainly, the defendent made a mistake. The mistake was that he cut a corner in a blind turn on a road he knew very well. Who can honestly say they haven’t done something like that, only they were lucky enough not to have an accident? <\/p>\n

Should this defendent’s life be destroyed for such a mistake? Is that the kind of society we want? A Russian Roulette society, where a single mistake might cost you your life’s savings, your chance at a reasonable career, your health?<\/p>\n

On the flipside, the plaintiff needs a solution, too. And the system isn’t getting any better: the recent bankruptcy bill will make it even harder to recover from such unlucky occurrences when the medical bills get astronomical.<\/p>\n

What’s truly ironic is that the very crowd that encourages this Russian Roulette society is the same crowd that complains about frivolous lawsuits and makes it harder for the middle class to get insurance by reducing small business incentives to provide it. But what’s the real dynamic of a frivolous lawsuit? A person who simply cannot afford insurance because their employer doesn’t provide any assistance, on the brink of bankruptcy, overwhelmed with medical bills, gets accosted by a less-than-ethical lawyer who convinces this victim of fate to sue.<\/p>\n

But sometimes, the only guilty party is fate, the luck of the draw. And the only way to mitigate the risks of chance is to insure people. Institute universal healthcare. Equalize the luck of the draw for everyone. Costs of insurance will go down with the bulk. Frivolous lawsuits will be less frequent.<\/p>\n

Our society currently makes it hard to get insurance, hard to force insurance companies to pay the money they owe, hard to recover from medical bills using last-resort bankruptcy, and super easy to get sued or sue other individuals. And the Bush administration’s solution? Make lawsuits more difficult. Sounds about par for the course. Let the millions of middle-class Americans play Russian Roulette.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while ago, I served on a jury in a civil case concerning a car accident. The plaintiff incurred tens of thousands of dollars in medical expenses and lost wages. The defendent was found liable as he clearly caused the accident. Deliberation was quick, as there wasn’t a whole lot to discuss. But there was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}