Skip to main content

This really happened in the US a few days ago!

A pregnant woman was rushed to the emergency room after a car accident, the new abortion laws have been enacted in this particular State, and the hospital lawyers sent an emergency request to the State's superior court for an injunction to operate on the pregnant woman, to help her survive the trauma, within 48 hours the hospital got the ruling that they were authorized to operate on the woman (99% certainty that the fetus would not survive -- hence the ruling), the mother in law's lawyers got an injunction to stop the operation, 24 hours later the court agreed with the lower court, but by then both mother and child had died.

The short-term impact, the legal dispute cost about $50,000 in legal fees and processing, (both the original emergency request and the injunction).   But the hospital and the doctor were in the clear as they had sought permission from the courts, the family lost both mother and child and also got a nice emergency room bill for about $240,000.   

I hear about this case because of the "insurance" angle.   The requirement for the court order was entirely driven by Lloyds of London because they told American insurers that they would no longer provide coverage for lawsuits, which would arise from these new (and badly drafted) abortion bans.  The States have decided to write incomplete legislation assuming that life is simple and linear.  Lloyds, which provides re-insurance has told the US insurance industry that coverage for such gray aspects of the new laws would no longer be covered in their re-insurance policies.   

In a sense, the entire insurance industry is washing its hands of the problem, and leaving American consumers and courts to figure out their own solution.  With the two court cases, the hospital was lawsuit-proof.   Especially when the mother-in-law sought the injunction.   The entirely preventable outcome is destroyed by stupidity.

The take-home from all this is clear, the re-insurance market is no longer willing to pay the cost of America's idiotic laws and has forced US insurance companies to seek immediate legal clarification before they allow hospitals and doctors to act.   

Why does no one hear about these things, mainly no one looks good, nor does the hospital, doctors or family.  As for the legislators, well par for the course really.  Seriously, what would the family say, "My mom forced the hospital to let my wife and daughter die".  

Note:  I know about this because my contacts are Lloyds.  It was one of several hundred cases of legal jeopardy arising in the US healthcare system.    The comment my friends got was that the US insurers were happy to dump the whole thing on the US courts.  Plus doctors although reluctant have no choice, 3 to 5 years in prison for non-court-approved abortion...of any kind (such as a life-saving operation on the mother).   Life is full of irony.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu
Post a Comment
Read more