Do you think a Burglars' Protection Society would be a good idea? - I'll explain what I mean: a Burglars' Protection Society would offer insurance to burglars so that if they got arrested for burgling, the insurance would pay the legal fees for their defence, enabling them to have top, highly-paid lawyers working for them, particularly skilled and experienced in all the ins and outs of winning such cases. And there would be inhouse salaried lawyers constantly on hand for legal advice. As well as this, the insurance would also cover any fine the Court imposed and would cover any damages awarded to the burglars' victims in a civil court action. The burglars would pay a yearly subscription of course.
Well I'm pretty confident that you can see many flaws in the idea of a Burglars' Protection Society and that you find the very idea ridiculous, and I'd agree with you about this. - But stay with me for a while because I have been setting up an analogy to put before you. - I suggest there are parallels to be drawn between the hypothetical Burglars' Protection Society and the actual medical protection societies that offer legal protection to physicians and surgeons.
Doctors pay subscriptions to their various Medical Protection Societies and in return receive ongoing top notch legal advice, and in the event of being sued in a civil action for professional negligence or arrested for criminal negligence and appearing in a criminal court, they have the very sharpest, most experienced defence lawyers money can buy. In the distinctly rare instances in which the court has the courage to find them guilty and fines them an amount of money or orders them to pay damages/compensation to their victim/s, this money too would come out of their insurance.
Now the main reason you and I find the idea of a Burglars' Protection Society ridiculous is that it would obviously result in many more burglaries, many more innocent citizens suffering loss and damage to their possessions and damage to their mental, emotional and financial well-being (and sometimes their physical well-being too), because with the insurance paying the burglars' penalties, there is less deterrent to burgling. - I invite you to see the same flaw with medical protection societies' insurance, i.e. when the doctor is found guilty, the monetary fine or the damages/compensation comes out of the well-filled coffers of the insurance company, and not out of the pocket or bank account of the negligent doctor. - So there is very little to deter doctors from being negligent. - Indeed there is so little to deter medical negligence that it is constantly on the increase.
Whoever thought up the nifty idea of medics insuring themselves against any effective deterrents to incompetence or negligence, you can be sure it wasn't a patient! The insurance is, I believe, 'justified' by explaining that it is in order to guarantee that the victims will receive any damages the courts may decide upon, but, as people who use their brains, you and I both know that this is not the case, don't we? - And wouldn't we all rather reduce the chance of being harmed by doctors' incompetence/negligence/malpractice than increase the chance of being awarded some money if and when we do indeed get harmed by them?
Also note that while the worst effect a guilty verdict would have on a doctor's wallet might be an increase in insurance premiums, by contrast, the doctor's victims are soon to be denied any scrap of legal aid (as well as no help from the Complaints Procedures).
Also note that while the worst effect a guilty verdict would have on a doctor's wallet might be an increase in insurance premiums, by contrast, the doctor's victims are soon to be denied any scrap of legal aid (as well as no help from the Complaints Procedures).
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