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How we reform the system is going to be critical. Going to more public health care run or managed by the state is going to get us more situations like the one in the OP rather than fewer. I don't want poor people to have bad health care, but I'm not interested in all of us getting the kind of care that they get as a way of equalizing the system.
In general, public health facilities are bad. Anyone with a choice doesn't seek treatment in them. More public facilities to get the costs under control equals more crappy care for you and me. Walter Reed anyone? Anybody read the mental hospital series in the Atlanta paper?
The profit margin is probably one of the big reasons most of us have the quality of care we do. Take it away, and it's going to be hard to figure out what will motivate good or excellent care.
In the dropping of the grandfather example, I'm a little confused. Unless the people moving grandpa did something specifically negligent when they dropped him, aren't they going to have some built in limits to what they can collect?
The dropping may have made the surgery necessary, but it didn't in itself cause the fatal infection. I'm sure the jury might be somewhat sympathetic, but really, had he successful recovered from the hip replacement, would you still feel the same, his family is entitled to money?
Is the term I'm looking for proximate cause, maybe?
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