MEDICAL NEWS: PHYSICIANS CITE LITIGATION AS CAUSE OF ERROR

New York, January 24, 2010(AP). The New York Times reports today that people are dying or sustaining permanent injury from radiation sickness because of the failure of doctors and hospitals to detect computer errors, missing filters, software flaws, faulty programming, poor safety procedures or inadequate staffing and training. The American Medico-Apologists’ Association (AMAA), says that these unfortunate deaths and injuries, along with ninety thousand preventable deaths from hospital-induced infections each year, are the result of malpractice suits and demonstrate the urgent need for tort reform now being pressed by Republicans in Congress.

Dr. Heathcote E. Bradbury, a radiologist at God Have Mercy on Us Hospital and spokesman for the AMAA said today, “Physicians are so frightened that process servers bearing malpractice papers lurk under every hospital bed and in the dark corners of operating rooms that their hands tremble and their minds aren’t free to do their work in a competent fashion. Until tort reform frees us from this plague of warranted criticism, we will continue to kill patients by accident. There will be a holocaust of mammoth proportions. In plain English, we will make mistakes until you stop suing us.”

In another medical development, scientists at Pfizer have produced experimental data suggesting that the effectiveness of medications is in direct proportion to their cost. In one experiment, Pfizer raised the price of Bacteria-Be-Gone (BBG), its new full-spectrum antibiotic, once each month and found that BBG’s effectiveness went up accordingly. Pfizer then raised the prices on all its prescription drugs by ten per cent and called it “a life-saving stratagem.”