Word: hmos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...recent Supreme Court decisions that will make it more difficult to collect damages from managed-care companies. He and David Boies, who represented the U.S. Justice Department in its humbling of Microsoft, are leading a syndicate of seasoned plaintiffs' lawyers that is suing seven of the nation's largest HMOs. The lawsuits, which were recently combined before a single federal judge in Miami, allege that the HMOs engage in what Scruggs calls "garden-variety consumer fraud." He argues that HMOs routinely recruit customers by touting their concern for patient health but run their businesses in ways that put cost cutting...
...reform? Because the Republicans are in the grip of the insurance companies, and the Democrats are controlled by the trial lawyers." McCain adds today that Congress "can't get anything done [on the Patients' Bill of Rights], so what is Dickie Scruggs doing? He's suing the HMOs. Is Dickie Scruggs doing the right thing? No. But do you blame him? No." Scruggs adds that "we wouldn't have made the progress we've made in civil rights in this country without the courts' acting when the Legislative Branch wouldn...
...could get ugly. In fact, it already has. Last fall during a congressional fight over the right to sue HMOs, the managed-care industry broadcast TV commercials showing a shark feeding as an announcer said archly, "America's richest trial lawyers are circling--and your health plan is the bait." The trial lawyers, for their part, recently targeted Senator Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican, for sponsoring a bill that would make it harder to sue asbestos manufacturers. Their ad featured a Montana woman walking in a graveyard and accusing Burns of "standing up for the people that made me sick...
...same road trip that took Scruggs to the meeting of Connecticut doctors, he dropped in on a Washington law firm to address a less-friendly group: lawyers who represent insurance companies and HMOs. He came to tell them it was in their clients' interest to settle. "One of these days, one of the industry's lawyers in court someplace like Jefferson County, Miss., is going to call headquarters and say, 'This jury just returned a $1 billion verdict,'" Scruggs said. "Just think what that will do to the company's stock...
...trying to scare his audience, it seemed to be working. One lawyer, perhaps hoping his own clients would be able to dodge the Scruggs juggernaut, asked if the wave of managed-care lawsuits would ever reach smaller HMOs. "Man, we're going to sue everybody," Scruggs said as the room filled with nervous laughter. "You have somebody in mind...