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Who Tells the Dead Patient Stories Now?
Since the health insurance reform bill passed this past spring, you’d think we suddenly stopped having American patients die and suffer unimaginable horror at the hands of the corporate owned and operated healthcare business system in the United States. No one tells the stories. The reality is that patients were props, and they just aren’t needed as props any more.
An estimated 45,000 preventable deaths occurring in these United States annually due to the lack of access to appropriate healthcare marches on. That does not account for those dead from other preventable causes like medical error. 45,000 every year. That’s 123 dead every day. Today’s dead: 123. Have you seen that reported anywhere? Yesterday’s dead? 123. Any reports? Tomorrow’s dead? 123. Is anyone trying to save those pending dead?
Though more Americans die preventable deaths every day without access to healthcare right here at home than die in weeks on any foreign battlefield, no one is searching for them in the wilderness of greed and profit-driven medicine. No one needs their painful realities right now.
123 Dead today.
Patient stories were used as props by elected officials, mainstream and alternative media members and groups, advocacy groups and think tanks. Relatives of dead patients made especially good fodder for the debates. Moms and dads of dead kids were prime targets to stand up on stages, sit at witness tables and have their names and details of the loved-one’s death shared with the world. Cancer patients who could not access care were pretty valuable too. If they could still stand, think and talk, cancer patients made for great photo-ops for all and better fundraising tools for others.
123 dead tomorrow.
Some may say this is to be understood as the nation has moved on to other issues following the passage of the health insurance bail-out bill – we are now worried about jobs, the oil spill, the Arizona immigration bigotry, the leak of documents on the Afghan war. All critical issues to be sure. Some may add that we’ll just have to wait and see if those numbers drop in 2014 or 2016 or 2018 as parts of the health insurance reform bill unfold
123 dead yesterday. Those insistent dead just don’t stop dying. They aren’t waiting for a third political party to emerge. They are the dead and the dying.
Patients are dying and suffering every single day in larger numbers even as the weeks of recession roll on and medical providers become even more tightly controlled about uncompensated and undercompensated care – meaning they are protecting their bottom lines too and uncompensated care is the term used for patients who come without any means of payment or with inadequate means of payment. Patients are suffering more, not less. Payments are demanded up front. Patients cannot pay the thousands or even the hundreds required for treatment. More death, not less.
123 people today will not die pretty, gentle, fade away in their sleep deaths with tearful loved ones at their sides. They may have spent weeks or even months begging for someone to treat them. They may have been working even weeks ago or days ago but unable to get past the co-pay and deductibles of their insurance to get early treatment and unable to slack off for even one moment on their jobs lest an opportunistic employer decide to lay people off based on unspoken measures of value, like use of sick time for doctor visits. They will die after arguments and struggles with those they leave behind as the financial pressures mounted and their illnesses deepened.
I searched every news outlet page I could find to see if anyone was reporting on yesterday’s dead. No one did. 123 people died, and few people even noticed their passing. I searched to see if anyone was reporting the impending slaughter of 123 innocents in the United States today, and no one is reporting on it.
Along with the 45,000 dead, we allowed 700,000 patients and their families to go belly-up financially in 2009. In the U.S., medical crisis leads to more than 50 percent of the personal bankruptcies (and of those patients, 75 percent had health insurance). So, as we saw personal bankruptcy filings rise 31.9 percent overall in 2009, we also added more patients and their families into our deadbeat files. Even if those folks get well physically, we’ll punish them forever for having gone broke. Bankruptcy bruised credit takes years to repair.
123 dead today. 1,917 going broke today in the midst of medical crisis. In this nation. Yet no one reports. No one.
The one thing I know for sure is that the patient horror stories were certainly an integral part of the fuel that moved any debate on health reform to take place at all. The dead and dying made for a better frame for press pieces than simply selling health reform as a way to bail out the private, for-profit health insurance industry and bolster the medical-industrial complex overall. Patients are necessary in this system and in the debate only to the extent that without them you cannot run the engines of medical profit.
123 dead. 1,917 in financial collapse. Homes lost. Futures torn apart. And no one reports.
There are those who still clamor for real transformation of the U.S. healthcare system from the for-profit model to a social insurance model like extending and improving Medicare for all. But even many of those people have somehow decided that it’s only the money arguments that need to be made – only the profit-takers who need convincing with the language of more profit and fortunes still to be made.
I disagree. I think someone must have the courage to keep reporting the healthcare war dead. In fact, I believe their faces and their names ought to be more prominent as we go forward as measures of what we are allowing to be done to our fellow human beings in this nation.
123 dead yesterday. 123 dead today. 123 yet to die tomorrow. Since the passage of the health insurance reform bill in March 2010, 14,670 American patients are dead. And no one spoke their names. The day we become a nation that turns its back on that much death and suffering is the day we have lost much more than a political battle -- we’ve lost our collective soul.
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45 Comments so far
Show AllObama during the campaign tells the story of how he watched his mother fight with insurance companies about how to pay the bills. Therefore we all thought that he would recognize the need to make health care a right and not a commodity on the market. We sure read that one wrong. Perhaps what bothered Obama was that his mother did not have enough money to pay the bills. He made sure that this would not happen to him by becoming a part of the new American aristocracy. For him and his family health care costs even if they soar into the millions will be taken care of. Is this a great country or what.
"... his mother did not have enough money to pay the bills. He made sure that this would not happen to him by becoming a part of the new American aristocracy." sums it up. well said.
I find it both amazing, and disturbing, that guys like Obama, and Clinton, who came from nothing, can so quickly forget where they came from and screw over the average person with almost complete abandon. I wonder how that happens? Is it a view of the world they came into office with, or is it one they adopt once they obtain power?
I have nothing good or bad to say about Chelsea Clinton as a person, but the amount of money being spent on her wedding by what are supposed to be a pair of "public servants" is obscene, IMHO. Think about that wedding, which I hear Obama will be attending, next time those same "public servants" start preaching "austerity" for us little folk.
Well I am disappointed that Chelsy became a Hedge fund manager and married an investment banker. But remember that for both the Clintons and the Obamas there is no higher calling, no better way to vindicate their self worth than to see how they came from humble beginnings and have moved on to the highest ranks of society. Being poor makes you want that social status more. It is usually the "self made" types who are most likely to screw you over. As to why some remain Democrats when they have Republican values-- simple opportunism-- its an easy way to get elected.
Neither Clinton or Obama "came from nothing", NC-Tom.
Slick Willy Clinton graduated from Oxford.
Obama's childhood included attending private schools, living abroad, graduating from Harvard.
The fact that both Clinton and Obama grew up well within the top 25 economic percentile, emphasizes the fact that unless you have a net worth of $6 to 10 million dollars (depending where you live) and can self insure, you are vulnerable to the US medical industrial complex bankrupting you and your family.
I amend my remarks taking into account your excellent observation. Being lower class but being allowed to associate with those of higher social status and feeling as a result that you are as competent or worthy as they, ex. merit scholarships, is what really turns them. Obama at Columbia and Harvard, Clinton at Georgetown and Yale.
Ambition may be a fundament of the American dream, but there are those that seek to satisfy its requirements by actually doing something that benefits others. That ideal used to be called "service to the greater good."
When someone like Condi Rice or (was it Andrew?) Yoo, or Colin Powell rises into the ranks of the innermost power circles, it takes a very spiritually retarded soul to turn its back on all those that should be represented by that kind of power.
I'm sure there's a great allure to being wined and dined constantly, holding admiration and power... but somewhere in those quiet moments, when the head drops down onto the pillow to entertain its last thoughts before sleep arrives as deliverer, a reckoning comes.
Literature is full of stories that chronicle the ways that some people turn towards altruistic service, while others only serve themselves. Clinton, Obama, and many others now prominently placed within the "ring of power" all had the opportunity to use their influence to make a difference. Instead, they just heaped on more servings for themselves. Many in this forum question the idea of the law of karma, quite a few find the premise of an Organizing Spirit (a/k/a God) preposterous... so for them, blind, naked ambition carries no ultimate result. There is no final arbiter on the matter. The Teachings of the Masters (from many cultures and time periods) suggests instead that each must answer for the choices made, the opportunities given.
Few of us would trade places with those who have symbolically sold their souls. There is a price extracted for selfishness, especially when untold suffering has spread intensely to and through every continent.
Does anyone know the date of Chelsey's wedding? If it's scheduled during the next 2 weeks, it will coincide with a cosmic clash of the Titans. Sometimes the sins of the parents are visited upon their sons and daughters. Let the FATES vote!
"I'm sure there's a great allure to being wined and dined constantly, holding admiration and power... but somewhere in those quiet moments, when the head drops down onto the pillow to entertain its last thoughts before sleep arrives as deliverer, a reckoning comes."
Siouxrose, that was a great line there, loved it! Man would I love to have access to those last thoughts...
Thank you, NC. I've just begun another script to novel conversion and when I spend hours editing my own work, language generally flows better. It becomes more lyrical.
As for the final thoughts near to the pillow... sometimes I wonder if some of the presidents' wives are not the modern versions of Lady Macbeth. Sleeping beside such a woman would do much to deflect that intended moral reckoning. The sex drive is such a powerful force... and double-edged blade; for without it, the continuity of species would come to a halt. Yet with it, lots of behaviors that should not be tolerated instead become accepted. How could Laura sleep next to little George? The adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely definitely has cred! Now I have to wonder about Michelle.
When I said "came from nothing", I meant more of a working class background than say a Bush or a Kennedy.
My understanding is that Slick graduated from Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, I tried looking up how Obama paid for school but there is just too much right wing B/S to sort through to be bothered.
TAMMONS: I like your post, but I would like to say more about this Hedge Fund high status idea. If someone like Henry Ford amassed a fortune because he built something significant (suburban sprawl and the oil wars were not easily seen from the inception of the auto), then his wealth was based on something of tangible worth.
The Hedge Fund is the logical conclusion to a society that worships greed above all other things. Hedge funds and their markets of derivatives are complete fictions. These con artists have exalted the art of the DEAL and raised it to the level where it literally becomes the yardstick against which serious deals, fatal decisions are made. Since these brokers claim access to obscene sums, literally the sacrifice of children (casualties of the warrior ethos at home along with the collateral damage that represents the offspring of others) is on their hands. Nor do they shy away from the demolition of major ecosystems, those critical for life's sustainability. These sacred things they routinely trade away, as if the ledgers the anointed Hedge Fund operatives utilize are an equivalent to those genuine living beings expunged at the call of their computer keys.
The Hedge Fund is the place where Dante's Inferno meets the oldest sin: the love of money, root of all evil.
I would not be surprised if the Bush offspring end up in that hell-well, too. To seek Wall Street as proof of one's aspiration demonstrates the triumph of naked self-interest over every possible worthy ideal. Few things (or should I say callings) are uglier.
A little research will show that many of the elites' kids join (or marry into)the investment banking world.
I think cosmic justice would be served if the Obamas and the Clintons have to live several lifetimes as peasants in war torn areas dominated by US intervention. Iraq, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Hatti etc. Let their souls learn the territory that they have created well and experience the consequences of their previous acts. I want their future lives to be an educational experience, I don't want them mouldering around in Hell or just marking time in an inferno.
TAMMONS: From what I've read & studied, your depiction appears to fall into synch with the way things supposedly play out. This planet is designed for the education of souls; and the intended evolution of the spirit runs parallel to that of the mind/body. When individuals abuse power, they must learn to become humble and submit to others' power... and until the planet as a whole evolves, that power is apt to involve the same abuses they themselves levied onto others. Forgiveness and transcendence break the chains. Otherwise, karma acts as equal opportunity employer.
abuse of power=allopathic medecine....which whether in the form of surgical or chemical chemical intervention are acts of power, much like modern weapon based war.......
Obama is a major league wanker. Using that story about his Mom was one of the most blatant examples of how a politician will say anything, use anyone, even the dead to further his /her own ends.
He used his dead mother. Obama is a charismatic, psychopathic politician. Nothing more.
I'll second that and call for a vote!
I wrote to him and told him, that he should be ashamed of himself for using his dead Mother !
"I searched every news outlet page I could find to see if anyone was reporting on yesterday’s dead. No one did."
American journalism lost its "collective soul" decades ago.
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It is obvious that these sick people hate America and are using their sickness and death as part of some asymetrical warfare against the United States to make corporate controlled health care look bad.
They probably also want the terrorists to win.
Who Tells the Dead Patient Stories Now?
Who Tells the Dead Homeless Stories Now?
Who Tells the Dead Drone Victims Stories Now?
Who Tells the Dead Afghani Stories Now?
Who Tells the Dead Iraqi Stories Now?
Who Tells the Dead Vietnamese Stories Now?
Who Tells the Dead ....
So many victims, past, present, and future of this empire, how it continues to carry on speaks to the power of propaganda, on the side of the elite, and gulibility on the part of the masses.
"The day we become a nation that turns its back on that much death and suffering is the day we have lost much more than a political battle -- we’ve lost our collective soul."
As quickstepper noted, American journalism lost its collective soul a long time ago but I would go further. Thinking and acting collectively is still a taboo even amongst some of the progressives and liberals thanks to the Reagan/Bush2 ideology of the last 30 years though Nixon pioneered it in the 1970s. I remember the 1960s when people would look out for each other's health. Ever since those prepaid health care plans, aka HMOs, started under Nixon's administration, I came to notice a strange behavior in people detaching themselves from caring and looking out for each other. It became very obvious starting in the mid 80s when corporations started laying their fingers on hospitals. With all that forming, neighbors would say that they could take care of themselves when what they really meant to say was "I don't need you. The big guy is taking care of me." It is only when more people realize that these prepaid scams, aka "insurance", are unaffordable and/or don't work when they really need it that some of them finally decide to think humbly. But it doesn't end there. Big Insurance does its job of running those polished commercials to keep as many individuals hooked to insurance. The day this nation will be on the road to single payer will be the day when people stop falling for the scam known as insurance and people unite on health care. At the rate our nation is fragmented in thinking and fizzling as a result, I don't have any feeling that people will get it no matter how many mourning tragedies get reported on their deaths from lack of health care coverage or "coverage" that didn't work for them when they needed it the most.
I just recently read the book "Pandora's Seed". Part of the premise it discusses is how when humans made the turn 10,000 years ago from hunter-gatherers (tribal society) to an agriculturalist society we essentially gave up our individual freedom (i.e. self-determination in a broad sense of the word). This is because in an agricultural society, individuals become so interdependent on one another and one or a few people with broad-based skills can not longer accomplish what a mass of people with extremely specialized skills can accomplish. This was also the birth of government (that conservatives disdain) that was required to tame the hoards and meet the needs of mass gatherings of people known as cities that agricultural societies require to sustain this mode of society. As a nurse I dispense specialized healthcare but I am dependent on others for my food, fuel, shelter, etc, needs. (I hope Spencer Wells would forgive my paraphrasing and extrapolations from his book :) From my perspective in our world today, we carry leftover illusions of freedom and self-reliance and this can be seen in the Conservative rhetoric about individualism and gun rights and etc. We have in essence given up our individual freedoms 10,000 years ago to become cogs in this societal wheel, working hard hours and long weeks to make it all work. Why do so many in the US want to reject a very beneficial and natural offshoot of this already "collective" society (universal healthcare) for the delusion that we are somehow still self-reliant individuals? Universal healthcare is not the beginning of losing our "freedom", individual healthcare is one of the last vestiges of our delusion. The health (spiritual, physical, financial) of our nation will make a huge leap forward when we recognize our interconnectedness to each other (spiritually, physically, financially).
and when we recognize, no that's too abstract a word, when we feel the connectedness of the dead, the now living, and those who are to come after us. Then we will make the leap forward. I'm 64 and I feel it all.
By the time most Americans come to this understanding,it is only after they've been screwed by the system, at which point it is too late.
Thanks for reminding us, Donna.
I know one isn't supposed to pick at a scab, much less beat a dead patient.
But this article ought to be bookmarked, and the link presented in response to the defenders of the abominable No Insurer Left Behind health insurance corporation bailout.
Once in a while one comes across a hurried, rearguard defense of putative "progressive" Elected Misrepresentatives who scrambled aboard the Obama's Big Win bandwagon, blithely expressed as "X voted for an imperfect law that Saved Lives".
Sometimes it's missing the caveat that the bill was "imperfect" or "flawed"; sometimes it's alleged that X ultimately supported the bill BECAUSE it Saved Lives.
This article, if taken faithfully, is a sure cure for this insidious manifestation of subjunctivitis*.
____________________
* "... (after the 'subjunctive mood' in English grammar: may, might, perhaps, hopefully, etc.) in which people confuse their sense of reality with what they wish to be real. http://sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/?p=240"
45,000 is approximately the same number of people who die each year in automobile accidents in the United States. Denying people, usually poor, prompt medicial treamtment is tantamount to genocide.
VP, on top of the 45,000 due to lack of proper coverage you should add the yearly 200,000 deaths from medical errors and hospital infections. Single payer would definitely go a long ways towards reducing those deaths as well. Also, I would not call this a health care war since Big Insurance/Pharma/Food have already won against us before we could even fight. I would call this the Tragic Anti-HealthCare Occupation about to get worse with Obamacare once the mandatory insurance purchasing kicks in unless one's state is successful in blocking the federal government from penalizing us for refusing to purchase defective coverage. :(
Right on, J.B! You raise very significant points!
PROFESSOR: Thank you for delineating "the evidence." Numbers speak loudly when they're placed in bold ink.
Kudos to Donna Smith for her indomitable spirit, and never giving up the fight for decent health care for ALL!
If we're going to talk about the "healthcare war," it's also worth relating that the drug war is doing to families what the health care "war" is doing to bodies. In both cases people are being torn apart; and in the name of some form of national service, they're hardly being served in any affirmative way.
Any child who grows up without a parent pays a psychological price. Whether that parent was removed due to a nonsensical "possession" (of a recreational drug) charge, the "illegal immigrant" status, or a treatable medical condition... when we count the statistics, we often fail to qualify how these losses continue to reverberate through the lives of the children left behind. (The same could be said for those soldiers who die, or go missing, in these various and sundry wars.)
I long for a time when NOTHING is any longer perceived through the prism of war. Instead of the approach of fighting this or that, energy and resources should be directed at (and invested in) alternatives that HEAL or modify the problematic conditions. Americans will one way or another learn to collectively cast their cognitive nets to the OTHER side. The old approaches do not work, and they are costing us EVERYTHING!
(Imagine if Donna should read today's article about the money that's gone missing in Iraq. How many of those 45,000 lives would have been saved had a fraction of that money come home to address the true basis of national security, where the well-being of THE people becomes its focal concern?)
VP: You're quite right, and thank you for pointing the connection out. The dearth of compassion is dazzling for what it does in the way of reducing the quality of life for so many... this, in a nation that boasts of purported religiosity!
Did you see Bill Maher's "Religulous" film? Definitely worth viewing.
When I said best post I ment yours , Visiting Professor. THX
The problem, we face, Ms. Smith, is the survivors of our system HAVE health insurance. It gives them a sense, they deserved to survive, and you didn't. It's the American/Puritanical way: that I am where I am because I deserve to be, and you aren't because you're a loser.
Aw, poor Donna. Still begging for government monopoly of healthcare again? Nobody wants government picking our health care. Reform's on its way. Let the markets decide. Now shut up and sing. If you don't like it, leave the country.
This is by far one of the the best posts I have seen. Thank you....
I have been preaching the same song. I am a victom and survivor of this war. I also have lost a few loved ones in the battle. The part that I can never understand is how each and every American that opposses Universal Healthcare can live with themselves.The reallity is we have enough money to give good Healthcare to every man, woman, and child. We do not need the insurance company at all. They are not Doctors or patients. They are just a middleman that invented themselves for massive profits. Nixons, Vice President Agnews brother had an idea, and here we are today. The part were you say that Doctors perhaps are not fulfilling their pledge, and duty is so true. Anyway where are the Protesters ? I ask that about many issues in this Country ,I have for about 5 yrs. It is shameful how a person can say if you get sick then I don't care if you loose your job, your credit, and then your home. How could anyone feel that this type of behavior, or responce, is anything but... mid-evil. We all pay enough taxes to pay for Healthcare ,really we do. If we were not engaged in two illigal wars, we would have far more resources. We really need to stop waisting money in 5 dozen different ways. If letting your neighbor live was important to Americans, then WE would have the money!! Why do we hate ourselves ? This is the only thing I can think of right now, is that we don't like ourselves. Maybe all the things, We as a Nation, have been doing to other Nations, all around the world has affected us ? Maybe we feel guilty, and we have no respect or care for one another. I do not claim to know the answer, but it is not natural for human beings to not want to help each other, so why is this Country Hell Bent on not helping each other when we get sick.
That is one side of this, and then there is the Doctors, and Hospitals. Also the Drug companies.These groups have raised the price of medicine to an almost impossible expence for the average family.
The sad, plain truth is that we have become a nation of people who are wlling to watch as 46,000 of our family, friends and neighbors die each year, sacrificed in the name of higher profit for the insurance industry.
Are we any different from the civilizations whose citizenry watched as hearts were torn from the bodies of those who were to be sacrificed to the 'gods?'
Or is the only difference that our taste in 'gods' has devolved?
The problem with this article is the numbers reported are not the whole picture. In 1996 (8?) it was reported in the JAMA medical journal that 100,000 deaths per year were due to legal medical errors: wrong drugs, drug reactions, wrong diagnoses, etc. It has been estimated this number is only 10% of the medically caused deaths. This is based on the facts that hospitals and medical practitioners are NOT required to report these errors and they blatantly deny drug reactions when patients report them. Further when death certificates tend to assign a disease as cause of death as opposed to the conditions that caused the death; ie, poisoned by chemotherapy or statin drug induced heart attack.
Recently, this number has been increased to 200,000 deaths per year from allopathic medical care. This now translates to 2 million deaths a year in the United States from the medical industry. These are American figures, not world wide numbers.
So when people like Donna Smith talk about 45000 deaths due to lack of medical insurance, I have to wonder is this in not the good news. With the current medical industry we will only see increasing deaths, failed quality of life, and impoverishments with more people using this system. It is known by people who follow this issue that the United States has the worse health with highes costs of all developed nations. It is far surpassed by Cuba's health which struggles financially as a nation.
My issue with this article is that it pushes for a national medical insurance system, but it does not question the medical industry itself and its dangers to life and limb. I cannot support any health system that does not question the use of drugs as the primary method for dealing with health issues. I cannot support any system that does not make prevention, the building of health as its keystone. I cannot support any health system that doesn't support holistic methods of healing, using drugs and surgery as the method of last resort. That is how we need to deliver better health to people and lower costs. These issues cannot be separated.
TAMARQUE: Thank you for pulling back the curtain. You make excellent points. I, too, prefer the holistic/preventive route and it's often a proven way to alleviate many symptoms that are being currently drugged away. I would, however, question how you came to the "2 million a year" figure in your 2nd paragraph? Was that a typo? It does not seem to follow from the "math" statistics you related.
Update: There's more. There's a great article on how Wall Street is controlling health care and a must read.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/147646?page=entire
A friend of mine who lives in the USA as do I would have been one of these fatalities but for the fact that he has a friend from Canada who got this friend of mine into Canada to get a life saving operation on an emergency basis. The Canadian hospital was ready when my friend arrived and charged him nothing for the operation which doctors here in the "good old USA" said was a must for this person to survive and that in the USA it would cost tens of thousands of dollars which this person didn't have and didn't have health insurance. The figure of tens of thousands was even with some help from another source, thus completely and obscenely out of reach for my friend. This is the real story of how terrible US health care is after Obamacare went through also. How many US citizens don't have friends from Canada to help them get such life saving operations? Think about that and not all these hot air stories about how people in Canada have to wait to get such "crucial operations" as plastic surgery, breast and booty implants.
AD
This is a good reminder of how things really haven't changed much in healthcare.
The Omaha World Herald had an editorial from a lawyer describing the "Code of Silence" between doctors.
It goes on to tell the story of a woman who was badly injured at the hands of a surgeon. When she went back to her family physician, he was irate and told her that there was negligence and to go see a lawyer.
When she saw a lawyer and went back to the family physician, he said he couldn't get involved and wouldn't confirm what he had told her.
The attorney was forced to seek an out of state doctor who was willing to testify. One theme of the defense at the trial was that "This out of state doctor doesn't know Omaha medicine. He doesn't know how we do things in Omaha." The local doctors testified that there was no negligence at all, which resulted in a win for the doctor.
Out of 43 medical malpractice cases tried in Omaha since 2005, 84 percent have been won by doctors.
http://www.omaha.com/article/20100725/NEWS0802/707259975#midlands-voices-code-of-silence-insulates-doctors-ill-serves-patients
In reality, less than 1% of the people who are victims of malpractice ever win an award.