Dennis Quaid testifies about limits on lawsuits
May 14, 2008
Actor Dennis Quaid was in Congress today, testifying about the medical mistake that caused his newborn twins to get 1,000 times the normal dose of the blood thinner Heparin.
While the mix-up occurred in the hospital, Quaid and his wife say Heparin’s maker, Baxter Healthcare Corp., must answer for the way it packaged the dose and the megadose.
The two labels were so similar, the Quaids claim, that Baxter had warned hospitals about it and submitted changes to the FDA, but didn’t bother to recall containers that were already out there. Baxter says it should be immune from suit because the FDA approved the original labels.
That puts the case at the crossroads of the debate over federal pre-emption of consumer lawsuits, now underway in Congress and coming to the Supreme Court later this year in a case from Vermont.
According to the Associated Press:
Lawsuit limits have been included in 51 rules proposed or adopted since 2005 by agency bureaucrats governing just about everything Americans use: drugs, cars, railroads, medical devices and food.
Decried by consumer advocates and embraced by industry, the agencies’ use of the government’s rule-making authority represents the administration’s final act in a long-standing drive to shield companies from lawsuits.
“Like many Americans, I believed that a big problem in our country was frivolous lawsuits,” Quaid testified. “But now I know that the courts are often the only path to justice.” He added that pre-emption “will basically make us uninformed and uncompensated lab rats.”
What’s your take — do you agree with the consumer advocates, or do you think there needs to be a limit?
JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor
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Dennis,
You are right. Scanning braclets and medicine is happening here in Cincinnati, Ohio at Good Samaritian Hospital. It can be done.
Every one of our patients has a braclet, it gets scanned, then the medicine gets scanned and then the name tag of hospital employee who gives out the medicine gets scanned. They have many many laptops for each section of the hospital. This should have not happened to our twins.
I do hope your children will get well. There is so many mistakes
like this one that happens all too often.
God Bless,
The Wilkie Family
Well, this is a lovely sentiment. But it doesn’t fix anything. In fact, it makes the already totall corrupt system even less liable. Use your mind, and think like they (the rich Doctor’s, Lawyers, Malpractice Insurance Companies, etc,,).
If we hadn’t figured out, I will personally assure you that there is nothing–NOTHING–that cannot be hacked. With healthcare systems announcing a country-wide effort to abandon intra-net (in house ops) and go with Google’s, ‘in development’ massive database of records and patient histories, you can usher in a whole new era of hacking.
And, in relation to this story, if bracelets and medications are assigned and scanned, through a series of laptops, that sounds like we are eliminating the human labor ($$$) and disguising it as a way to hold irresponsible staff, accountable.
So, if Sue Smith didn’t notice that the medication scanned twice, and Bob Jones comes along 8 hours later and administers the dose an unnecessary second time,,then what?
What if the wrong patient, say a pediatric twin who cannot read, gets the bracelet belonging to another child from the cancer ward and is prepped for major surgery?
No, not a d5mn chance. If your company cannot better differentiate the labeling of two medications, used for the same purpose, only in massively different, age-appropriate doses, then they are negligent as is the Hospital Pharmacist who handles intake of Medication, for not being alert enough to notice the potential for disaster.
Mr. Quaid, I have been robbed of 4 years of my life and endured agonizing withdrawl, all because a medical cover-up in this country seeks to keep the truth about Benzodiazepine drugs, under wraps, because the profit margin and the near guarantee of a normal individual, to become addicted to these drugs, thinking he needs them for anxiety, is a guaranteed consumer.
The drugs become toxic (they almost never share this, because, to do so, would drive any patient to steer away from the drug, which is in no way necessary, even for short periods (unless ER overdoses of certain meds require them).
I hope your clout and fame can help you beat these monsters.
BTW;Heath Leger was prescribed 2 of the drugs I am talking about, as well as two more that are not in the same class, but have identical addiction potential and operation mechanisms. They are newer so Big Pharma figured how to alter the recognizeable elements of benzos, enough that they could not be qualified as such.