FEMA: Value of Statistical Life (per person): $7,500,000https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-08/fema_bca_toolkit_release-notes-july-2020.pdf
250,000 / 7,500,000 = 3%
Texas tort reform effectively says your life has only 3% of its full value when a nursing home severely abuses and/or kills you.
All tort reform caps effectively kill the practice of suing for medical malpractice. $250k is not enough money to put together a winning case and go through months of litigation, much less have money to actually help a client out afterwards.
other notable stats:
$250k in 2003 is worth around $457k today in 2024
additional injury and death cap details:"Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code Section 74.303 imposes an additional cap on wrongful death or survival claims in the amount of $500k, based on 2003 dollars. This cap applies to all categories of damages, including both economic and noneconomic damages"https://painterfirm.com/medmal/understanding-how-damages-caps-work-in-texas-medical-malpractice-cases/
VSL is used as a determinate in risk management. It is the amount of $ the public is willing to spend to reduce loss of 1 life for / on a specific project or proposal. VSL can change by the demographics of the population at risk. FEMAs figure is an overall used for their programs & theirs is high as it’s so much about waaaaay more expensive cri$i$ management (rather than long term planning).
It is not that an individual is worth 7.5M.
Planning - for health, for transportation, for emergency services, etc. - uses VSL to place a $ amount value on the risk of change. In health planning, policy development tend 2 b abt improved longevity, reduced morbidity, lower mortality within a cost / benefit analysis with risk(s) used as a factor. For health planning especially for facilities, both VSL and its sister, VMR aka Value of Mortality Risk are both used. A somewhat good way of describing it is:
VSL reflects an individual’s willingness to exchange $ for a change in their risk; it is not individual value. Like if XYZ was to done, it will decrease by 1 in 10,000 your chance of dying, but if ABC done, it will decrease by 1 in 100,000 your chance of dying…. so if variables & costs are the same, XYZ is the better choice on an empirical level.
& thank you for attending my TED talk……
That has always created in an already suspicious mind (my own) a whole lot of questions. But there you are.
I will leave it to the admins whether to remove or not, but I do think that as skewed as our OP's argument IS, there is a need to know out there about the law limitations (other than Peggy Sue's dream settlements which are way more rare than hen's teeth), there is not going to be a med malpractice suit. Sadly, that counts for almost ALL instances of harm done. Attorneys will no longer accept the case.
Again, I think it is good, if a person feel they themselves or a loved one is HARMED that they SEE an attorney. You can almost always do that free, to be told Handel on the Law's marginal legal counsel that "you have NO CASE".
Hopefully we do not (and we DO NOT ) see many murders. When there is a murder in any facility (watch The Good Nurse on streaming) there WILL, with good proof, be a good settlement, and yes, it will not go to court.
That's isn't what we are talking her.
That is MURDER.
Here we are talking mal practice as in unintentional harm to a patient through negligence.
The only way you can win for any wrong doing is if the person LIVED through it but is SERIOUSLY impaired for LIFE. That is the only thing that will make a med mal attorney even listen to you.
There are ambulance chasers out there who will do dozens of nuisance law suits so that you may win 20,000 to go way and they will take 60 percent of it.
The other way to "win" is class action, but there you will spend hours of your time and get almost NOTHING and the attorney walks away with a bundle.
You are correct that this was done two decades ago. It was done to protect corporations from the little guy. It has worked VERY WELL.
As I said to another person yesterday and again today "the USA is Corporations-R-Us" and we are the commodities.
I always invite people who imagine themselves injured AND in line for some cash to go ahead and see a few attorney's, who will explain to them that taking their case isn't worth the amount they must invest in getting records, in hiring expert advise to the tune of 100s of 1,000s and THEN be beaten by a great Corporate Attorney Team for a Big Corporation.
I am glad you wrote here. It's very difficult to inform the public of this.
People who are injured keep hearing "Sue! Sue them!" Sure. Go ahead. Your chances of winning anything are almost nil.
Igloo, who is very up on this stuff and comments here often, once said that the sad truth we need to get about our elders is that once we are over 65 we are worth NOTHING. If people get that one thing they will save themselves a lot of trouble and heartache.