A lot of ob/gyns aren't able to practice their love with women...

"Too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country." Remember that quote from our decider-in-chief? Of course you do. As most things that come out of his mouth, this quote sounded utterly ridiculous. But getting past the fact that our president can't very often put his words together so that they sound even remotely intelligent, the idea behind it did make sense - malpractice insurance is making it tough for doctors these days. I hadn't thought much about this until my wife recently had a regular checkup scheduled with her ob/gyn. The doctor who delivered both of our daughters, who are fast approaching the ages of 6 and 8, which means my wife has been seeing him for almost 9 years now, as have several of my friends. But when my wife called up to make an appointment, the only hours he offered were after 4pm, 2 days during the work week, or early Saturdays. Not the most convenient hours, since my wife likes to be able to visit her doctors without dragging along the kids (so the weekdays weren't good), and she didn't want to take time away from the kids on a Saturday. But she had no choice, since this was all he was offering. But why?

When she went in to see the doctor, she asked him what was up. Turns out he gave up all of his OB patients and was now teaching at a hospital, taking only GYN patients. Why? Because he said his malpractice insurance premium was $150,000 a year. Now I admit that I don't know how much revenue a typical ob/gyn takes in on Long Island (where we live), but $150,000 seems like a pretty hefty bit of overhead. And if you figure in staff salaries and the cost of maintaining a physical office space (rent, utilities, etc.), it's got to cost a pretty penny to be a doctor these days, though I imagine the payoff is still pretty good.

I don't envy the man and don't blame him for cutting back, especially when he told my wife that he had been sued by a former patient 5 years after he delivered her baby because the child showed developmental problems and "he must have done something." That's apparently what the woman's lawyer said. The doctor won the case, but it left him a little less enamored of the practice.

According to an article in today's Newsday (the main newspaper for Long Island) (http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzcov0218,0,7238563.story), one ob/gyn said he had to do 64 deliveries just to pay his malpractice insurance. Again, not being familiar with the intricacies of an ob/gyn practice, I don't know how many deliveries one doctor could conceivably handle in one year, what with office visits and gyn patients, but I have to think that that's a lot of deliveries. I'm familiar with the annual calculation of how many days the average person has to work just to pay their taxes, but given the added expense of malpractice insurance, I have to imagine an ob/gyn has to work that much longer in order just to break even.

Fortunately for my wife and I, we're done having kids, so we don't need to worry about finding a new OB doctor, but my wife's doctor was good, and he also did a lot of fertility work, so Long Island is short another highly qualified ob/gyn.

Now I'm a lawyer, but I'm not a litigator and I'm not going to defend litigators, especially when I hear of cases like the one mentioned above. I think litigators often bring cases just because they know they can get a decent settlement even if they don't win, or because, when they do win, the awards are extraordinary, so even a low winning percentage means a huge payout overall. I also think the insurers are at fault as they are all to quick to offer settlements because they can then hike up the doctor's premium (I'm not a big fan of insurance companies, by the way). I don't think capping awards is the way to settle this, but I think harsher penalties on lawyers who file frivolous suits or who have a propensity for bringing questionable claims, and more governance of insurance companies is probably a good place to start. But I also think we as a society have become too litigation happy, and we need to do something about that too.

A life taken

So, a bit of a downer this time around. I was going to ruminate on the Grammy’s, but I found out today that a friend of mine committed suicide. Well, I use the term “friend” a bit loosely here. She was the ex-wife of a good friend. I’ve known her for about 23 years. She came into my life in an unusual way and went out in a way that I wouldn’t have expected. Then again, I haven’t seen her in a few years, so I don’t know what’s been going on with her recently.

I first met her when we were both around the age of 15. Well, I know she was 15 and I think we’re the same age, so I figure I was 15 also. She started dating my brother’s best friend around that time. And she already had a kid, which was totally unfathomable to me at the time. I don’t recall what the circumstances were at the time, but she and her kid came to live with us for a while, I think because her parents kicked her out or something like that. But I always felt she was a bit off, if you know what I mean. She would get dressed up in high heels and mini-skirts just to walk her daughter around the block in her stroller. Not the typical motherly thing to do, me thinks. Her sexuality was a bit uncomfortable for me and my two teenage brothers, and that’s probably why my parents asked her to move out not too soon after she moved in.

But she was with my brother’s best friend, so we all accepted her, to one extent or another. They ended up getting married and having three more kids. I even worked with them to have him adopt her first daughter, but that never happened. She later took to rescuing animals and keeping a bunch of them in their home, which I thought was admirable. Then she went back to school to become, I think, a medical assistant of some sort. The two of them had a falling out with my brother and his wife a few years back and then they ended up moving to Florida for better work opportunities (not necessarily to get away from my brother). That’s when we sort of lost touch with the both of them. At first I would keep in touch with the husband via email, but then that petered out. Over the past few years I haven’t heard much of anything from either of them, except through his sister, who is one of my good friends from grade school. They got divorced some time in the past couple of years, I think.

Today I heard from my brother that this woman hung herself. Totally caught me off guard. You know, it’s one of those things that just doesn’t happen to people I know. I see it on the news or hear about it happening to someone else’s friend or relative, but not anyone I know. I guess she had some psychological problems over the past few years, and the divorce probably didn’t help things.

I called over to my friend’s house (the sister, not the ex-husband), and the oldest daughter of the woman who killed herself answered the phone – the one who lived with us when she was an infant. Again, totally caught me off guard. I knew it was her but didn’t know how to deal with it, so I first asked to speak with my friend (the girl’s aunt – not home) or my friend’s husband (sleeping). So I had to talk to her, which made me uncomfortable, because I’m not good at handling death, and I’m especially not good at talking to someone so directly affected by it. She was a lot more cool with it than I was. I guess it hasn’t hit her yet – that her mom killed herself - but she was rock steady on the phone. Amazing. She said she was looking at pictures of a bunch of us holding her when she was an infant. And that’s how I still picture her, since I haven’t had a lot of contact with her over the years. But she’s all grown up now and, from all reports, she’s turned into a fine young lady. Not quite the mirror image of her mom, and that’s got to be a good thing. I just hope that she, her younger siblings and her father stay strong through this messy situation. I’m not sure how I would have handled this situation at age 23.

Primary Day 2008 (a/k/a NY Giants Super Bowl Champs Parade Day)

Back in 2004 when John Kerry mounted his horrendous campaign for the presidency, I wanted to do my part. I'm an attorney, so I thought I could lend a hand, maybe in Ohio or Pennsylvania. But I couldn't get my act together in time to make that happen. Then I heard someone on the radio mentioning that a lot of places needed poll workers, so I called my local board of elections to volunteer. Only they told me I couldn't volunteer...they would pay me. Score! I've been doing it pretty much ever since, with the exception of the occasional primary election. This was my first one. Unlike in years past, where people voted by the election district (basically a selected geographic area) in which they lived, this time the board of elections decided to combine the districts but separate the voters by what party they were registered with. Democrats here, Republicans there. An interesting concept, but it messed with people who were used to the way things use to work. And people apparently don't read well (Democrat or Republican), because we kept getting Democrats coming to our table to vote, and vice versa at the Democrats table, not to mention the independent voters who ignored the sign that said only registered Democrats and Republicans could vote.

Being a poll worker isn't a gig for the lazy. We work from 5:30am until 9:00pm. For $150 (from which no taxes are withheld). Don't ask me how most poll workers do it, what with the apparent average age being about 80 (my unscientific estimate), but they do it.

The polling place where I was working was in the elementary school that my kids attend. I was stationed at the Republican voting table. In order to ensure no funny business, there are 2 Republicans and 2 Democrats stationed there. We had about 1,050 registered Republicans and one voting machine, compared to the 1,200+ registered Democrats with 2 machines at the other station.

Things started out slow. At least for us. Not much action in the early morning hours. A few folks on their way to work, probably getting their vote cast before they hit the train to Manhattan. Some of the elementary school students started arriving around 8am, apparently for string ensemble rehearsal. Regular classes begin around 8:30am. My wife stopped in with my kids to say hi before she dropped them off for the school day.

After the students were let in it was time for the pledge of allegiance over the loudspeaker system, followed by a quick salute for Black History Month, which was inappropriate, I thought, for its content - they were paying tribute to Barack Obama. The announcement was clearly heard in the voting booths. I seriously doubt it swayed the vote of anyone who came to vote, but I think better judgment would have been to discuss Obama the day before or after the election.

The morning plodded along, at least for us. We averaged about 8 voters per hour. Around noon the Democrats had 160 voters to our 40. An interesting statistic that the group of us working the table tried to figure out, throwing out our myriad theories. McCain is not inspiring; McCain has New York locked up so people probably figured their vote wouldn't make a difference; Nobody likes any of the Republican candidates; the Democrats have more interesting candidates; Democrats are more likely to vote because they want to take part in the historic event of voting for either the first strong female candidate or the first black presidential candidate; Obama is inspiring. Who the hell really knows? It's all a bunch of speculation.

I went home for lunch and to see if there were any updates on any of the races, even though I knew it was too early for there to be anything of significance to report...and I was right. The New York Giants parade was going on in Manhattan, and that was the big news of the day thus far. After a quick trip to Best Buy, it was "back to school" to wait out the day until dinnertime.

Still averaging about 8 voters per hour in the afternoon. Not much of anything exciting happening, though I did kill some time trying to guess the party affiliation of each person who came through the door...with a fair amount of success.

I do have to say that it was interesting seeing how many people came in not knowing that they could only vote if they were registered with either the Democratic or Republican party, and that they could only vote for candidates in their party. We got a lot of people who were registered but not affiliated with any party, some of whom swore that they were registered with a party. And a bunch who wanted to vote Democratic who were registered Republican. Not many Democrats who wanted to vote Republican interestingly enough. And we had a few people who, not realizing that they were registered Republican, decided that they didn’t want to vote for a Republican candidate. We ran out of registration cards giving them out to people who wanted to either switch parties or who wanted to actually affiliate themselves with one party or the other (again, mostly Democrats).

Back from dinner. Two hours to go and we're up in the 170's. Things have picked up since about 3pm. Lots of couples coming in. Older men and women too, walking with canes and walkers, whatever it takes to get their vote in. I had to admire that. One older woman was so determined to vote, even though she had to pause and take a seat half way across the gymnasium because she couldn't otherwise make it to the voting booth.

At the end of the night, turnout was about 30% combining together both Democratic and Republican turnout. But that hides a serious discrepancy. Republican turnout was about 19%, while Democratic turnout was 42%. A drastic difference. And, in my very small snapshot of the electorate, Barack Obama eked out a close victory over Hilary Clinton, while John McCain took about half of the Republican vote. Rudy Giuliani, out of the race, took 3% of the vote, and Mitt Romney took 33%. Don't extrapolate anything from this, because as I'm writing this, CBS is predicting Clinton to win New York.

And now, off to bed.

There's more a-comin'

For the 2 of you out there who read my posts, there's good news. I have committed to writing more regularly in '08, so check back for more of my ramblings soon...