Doctor removes wrong lung

If we can move away from horseshit issues like the ones the "values voters" are so inordinately obsessed with, maybe we can get to work on cleaning up America's health care crisis.

This is yet another story proving just how broken the U.S. health care system is.

In New Jersey, the State Board of Medical Examiners found that a surgeon removed part of a patient's right lung - when he should have been removing a tumor in the left lung. Removing tissue from the right lung meant no surgery could be performed on the left lung - thereby dooming the patient.

Then the doctor tried covering up his idiotic mistake by telling the patient that the removed lung contained a dangerous tumor - which wasn't true.

The doc's incompetence did lead to the death of the patient - who was a Vietnam War veteran - when the cancerous tumor that was supposed be removed ruptured and drowned him in his own blood. The 60-year-old patient died without a nickel to his name because his health benefits ran out. The surgeon also altered the patient's records to show he intended to operate on the right lung in the first place.

Even after state regulators determined the mistake could have been avoided if the doctor had taken "the most basic and minimal of actions that should be taken by a surgeon in advance of surgery", guess what the punishment for him was? He got his medical license briefly suspended and fined only a bit more than $81,000 (which is mere pennies to a highly paid surgeon).

That's it??? He only had to pay $81,000 for causing a man's death?

What's the excuse from the apologists for the broken health care system now?

I mean, it's so easy for hospitals and HMO's to sue patients because they're 30 seconds late with a payment or because they forgot to return a bedpan. I remember looking at the local legal notices, and they were littered with suit after suit filed by medical corporations trying to squeeze Joe and Jo Sixpack out of every last simoleon they could. I don't remember finding a single damn lawsuit filed by patients in these notices.

Fatal mistakes are par for the course when profit takes priority over people.

(Source: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/06/surgeons_license_is_suspended.html;
http://www.northjersey.com/news/northernnj/Doc_who_operated_on_wrong_lung_suspended.html)