LAW
Healthcare providers to Trump: Stay away from tort reform
“A bad federal law can do 50 times more damage than a state law.”
That’s the message Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a conservative provider group, wants President Trump to hear.
In a recent interview with Modern Healthcare, Orient characterized the Trump administration’s proposed budget as a broken promise for state flexibility. The proposed tort-related reforms are estimated to save about $31.8 billion over 10 years, stemming from cutting unnecessary services and discouraging “defensive medicine”: a term that refers to the practice of recommending a test or treatment that the patient may not need but is performed to protect a physician against a malpractice suit that claims a doctor didn’t do all he or she could. The White House also seeks to cap medical malpractice awards for noneconomic damages at $250,000, instill a three-year statute of limitations for claims, and exclude provider expressions of regret or apology from lawsuit evidence.
All these changes contradict the administration’s pledge to reduce broad Washington directives to the states on how malpractice should be governed. Rather than dictate tort reform, the administration should be providing states with increased enforcement flexibility, Orient said.
A big concern is that federal medical liability reform could prevent states from making their own changes to tort law, which falls under state purview. Several states have constitutional language addressing malpractice issues. In addition, at least 30 states have some type of cap on malpractice suit damages. There are also some instances in which state laws allow the caps to be surpassed in the event there is a permanent injury or death.
“We don’t want federal law to be the ceiling for medical liability reform,” Dr. John Meigs, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told Modern Healthcare. “It should, instead, be the floor for medical liability reform.” – Joana Suleiman
EDUCATION
Racial tension engulfs Evergreen State College
Typically, students at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., hold a Day of Absence demonstration where students of color organize off campus instead of going to class. This year, however, students turned the demonstration on its head and “invited” white students and faculty to leave for the day on April 12.
According to Professor Bret Weinstein, the day passed largely without incident. But more than a month later, Weinstein was forced to teach his class in a park because the school’s police department was told to stand down rather than face off against protesters searching for Weinstein.
Protesters reportedly sought Weinstein because he objected to the new version of the Day of Absence, writing in an all-faculty email, “There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles . . . and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away.”
Since that day, May 23, Evergreen’s campus has been engulfed in racial tension. Weinstein wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that “Evergreen has slipped into madness.” On Thursday, the entire campus was closed due to a “direct threat to campus safety.” – Jason Russell
CANNABIS
Study: Marijuana could give a cognitive boost to older brains
A recent study by German researchers at the University of Bonn and Hebrew University concluded that “a chronic low dose of THC restores cognitive function in old mice” and could prevent human brains from “slowing down” later in life.
The researchers gave mice of varying ages daily doses of THC for one month straight. While 2-month-old mice lost cognitive skills, the 12-18-month-old mice demonstrated a “considerable performance boost, even putting them on par with younger mice who’d abstained.”
The researchers tested the subject’s recognition of “familiar objects” and had the mice go through “a water maze in known and new configurations.” The group of elderly mice displayed no negative side effects from the THC, while the younger mice lost cognitive skills.
All told, the older mice that consumed THC demonstrated noticeable improvements in test performance. The conclusion: A dose of THC a day boosts the endocannabinoid system and, if comparable in humans, could result in a better qualify of life for the elderly.
Given the findings, researchers plan to conduct a similar experiment on older “human brains” via a clinic trial this year. Cannabis could very well help keep older brains sharper for a longer period of time, with one of the study’s co-authors, Andras Bilkei-Gorzo, saying: “If we can rejuvenate the brain so that everybody gets five to 10 more years without needing extra care, then that is more than we could have imagined.” – Joana Suleiman
