My persuasive essay is going to be along the lines of a personal essay that is supported with facts and research, rather than the other end of the spectrum.
This “draft” is a very opinionated rant about how I feel on the topic and does not have any cited sources. It does have some places where I will look for facts and figures to give my arguments merit. The only “proof” I make is the logical thought process that makes up my argument.
A popular film called Office Space includes a part of the hilarious plot where an employee at the main character’s office is mutilated by a car accident that leaves him in a full-body cast for the rest of his life. He then sues the driver of the car that hit him, and is set for life. He can leave his job and never lift a finger for the rest of his retirement He even goes so far as to have a party afterwards, calling his accident the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him. Examples like these represent a problem in this country: people can take terrible things that have happened to them, many times by accident, and turn it into a huge payout for the misfortunate. Law firms looking to bring together a class action suit interrupt programming with advertising to bring thousands of claims for millions of dollars. Couples fight in civil court for years, each claiming they are suing their spouse for their relationship ending. There is a culture in this nation that if something happens to you, you sue somebody. No questions asked. Lawsuit is the bane of this country. It perpetuates the culture of greed in the United States, victimizes many people, and is one of the major causes of rising costs in this nation.
The United States is a capitalist society, founded on individuals looking to make a fortune for themselves, their family, and those in business with them. Though not entirely synonymous, this culture creates a trite personality trait of greed throughout the nation’s individuals. We always want more. Ask the little kids in the AT&T commercials; two is better than one, bigger is better, faster is better, more is better. This culture drives the idea of a lawsuit. The only reason civil court exists is because people’s love of money is so dominating that they feel a monetary payout makes up for the ways in which they have been wronged. A lump sum makes living with mesothelioma worth it. Being fired is reason to bring forward a lawsuit when the word “insubordination” is too vague. It is all about the money.
Greed drives people to do wild things. Recently, a Judge sued an Asian family who own a few drycleaners in Washington DC. The cleaners temporarily lost a pair of the Judge’s pants. So, naturally, he sued them for $67 million dollars. That is almost half-a-million times the amount that the pants cost. The two sides have gone to court after court, because the Judge continues to appeal time and again to higher courts. The legal fees have put the family almost entirely out of business, something they worked their entire lives to build. They cannot even afford to pay the legal fees to sue him for their losses because of this ludicrous suit. Not to mention, at one point they even offered to pay him $12,000 and return the pants. He declined, he wants millions. He sees his claim as lucrative, not ludicrous.
This brings us to the second problem with lawsuit. It creates reverse-victimization. Since you can basically sue almost anyone for just about anything, those who are wrongfully sued become victims. They must pay court fees, legal fees, and unless they can find a lawyer pro bono, they have to pay for legal counsel. Going back to the asian family, they lost their life’s work to one ridiculous man with an even more ridiculous idea. And they are but one example. The mindset that negative happenings in one’s life should be approached with the mental idea “someone better pay for this” means that yes, someone eventually has to pay. And it rarely is pretty.
The fact that anyone can become a victim of a lawsuit means that individuals and companies have to protect themselves from such an occurrence Where we see this the most nowadays is in one of the largest and fastest growing business of our economy: Medicine.
While the healthcare debate spills out of Capitol Hill among the American people, dividing democrats and republicans on the future of the United States healthcare and healthcare insurance system, one must question the fundamental basis of the debate. Reform goes into the Government insurance plan for seniors and the underprivileged regulation dominates the insurance industries, and the healthcare system is squeezed for every dime from all sides. However, nobody talks about why the costs are so high to begin with.
Here is a proposal: medical costs are so high, and increasing, in large part to lawsuit. This is because of two main drivers of cost rooting from lawsuit.
The first is malpractice insurance. It is the insurance a doctor or hospital purchases to cover themselves if a patient does not receive the highest level of care possible, or if mistakes are made. A very large portion of the overhead of any medical establishment is the cost of its malpractice insurance. What happens when overhead is high? Costs are high. And when lawsuits continue to increase as they continue to come after caregivers, costs go up. The cost of healthcare is so high in part because a healthcare provider needs to pay for what they have to shell out.
The other half comes from how doctors behave when they can be easily scrutinized for mistakes. When an improper diagnosis can land them in court, facing a million dollar suit, they will do everything they can to make sure they miss nothing. Doctors order test they don’t have to, and even sometimes that they don’t even need, because they have to document that they ruled out every possible problem or made even the worst of doctors one hundred percent sure of the diagnosis before they can move on to treatment. In the treatment stage, they perform treatments they don’t have to, such as prescribing antibiotics for every runny nose they see just so it doesn’t turn into pneumonia when they said it would solve itself.
So, I propose a change in our civil court system. Large corporations are protected by a thing called limited liability. Why aren’t we all?
