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Friday 29 July 2016

What happens when doctors harm patients? (2)

If someone harms us, we have the right to seek legal redress. This happens in most spheres of human activity. No-one has permission, or the right, to harm other people, and get away with it.
I discussed this in my previous blog, 'What happens when doctors harm patients?' where I discussed how our doctors were struggling to pay their 'indemnity insurance' premiums which were rising rapidly.

In any other industry, such indemnity insurance would be seen as a cost of doing business, that if there was any danger of harming people in the course what was being done, it was right that there should be some protection for those who were harmed.

But this rule does not apply to the conventional medical establishment!


Let us be clear what this means. The cost of insurance rises when the cost of meeting claims rises. So medical indemnity insurance costs are rising because conventional medicine is harming more people, and the insurance companies are having to pay out more money. So much money that doctors are complaining that the cost of the insurance is now too much for them to pay. And the government responds by stomping up £60 million to pay for the harm doctors are doing to patients!

Postscript 16 April 2017)
It has been reported today, in the Pulse, that "Health minister David Mowat has said that the two-year commitment to reimburse GPs for rises to the cost of indemnity will continue in the future"!

The message to doctors is clear. Do not worry about the harm your pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are doing to patients. Carry on as before. We (the taxpayer) will pick up the cost.

Any other consumer of insurance policies would have another choice. If motor insurance premiums rise, have less accidents! If house and contents insurance premiums rise, ensure there are less claims.

This is not so for the conventional medical industry. Not only does the NHS budget set aside 25% of it budget (over £25 billion) to pay for medical mistakes, it is now going to subsidise doctors so that they can continue harming patients without having to pay the full cost of insurance.

So is indemnity insurance a problem for alternative medical practitioners? NO! Indemnity insurance from homeopaths who are members of the ARH (Alliance of Registered Homeopaths) is just £42 per year. This figure is actually less than it was when the ARH was first established over 15 years ago. And how much does the NHS pay for harm caused to patients by alternative medical practitioners. I would suggest that the figure is close to, if not actually, £0.

So why is this? 

It is because alternative medicine, and homeopathy in particular, does not harm patients. Rather than doing harm alternative therapies abide by the Hippocratic principle of 'First, do no harm'. Patients can be cured of illness and disease without the likelihood of harm or injury.