[mdlug] A plan to digitize health care - My Apology

[Michael S. Mikowski]

Threat of a lawsuit has some value, but the legal system is set to favor those 
with serious financial resources.  

For example, if you worked on contract for a business, and they simply do not 
pay your invoices, what recourse do you have?  In Michigan, you can sue, but 
you will always lose money even when you win.  Why?  Because the only thing 
you can do is recover the lost income months or years after you file, and 
/after/ paying your lawyer.  Last I knew, you could not recover legal fees, 
cost of your time pursuing the matter (discovery is /expensive/) or punitive 
damages, even if they use your work to generate income may times the cost of 
your work!

If you settle to avoid more fees, then you will get only some percentage of 
your income, with attorney's fees coming right out of that.  And you will 
almost certainly be required to sign an NDA so you can't even warn your 
associates of the immoral behavior of the company.

The best way to structure these things is to own things until they are 
completely paid for.  This way, you avoid the need to threaten legal action 
and hire a lawyer.  Possession is truly 9/10ths of the law.

Sure, class action lawsuits have benefits, but mostly to the lawyers.  They are 
only pursued if a fat commission can be recovered, not if something morally 
wrong is being done.  Lets see, last time I was "in" as class action lawsuit, 
I think I got maybe $1.35 from Bank of America.  The lawyers made millions.  I 
would be willing to bet that every single one of us have been members of a 
class action lawsuit numerous times; we just never significant benefit, and are 
only notified in 6pt light-gray type on the back page of our billing 
statements.

Coming back 'round to health care data, the same principle should apply.  
People should have free, fair access to their data, if for no other reason 
that they could possess it (e.g. back it up) and not be held hostage to a 
company or the legal team they would need to pay to get it back.

Cheers, Mike

On Wednesday 14 January 2009 04:40:09 Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> Mark Thuemmel wrote:
> > Sure Dan, the vendor will just automagicly produce the data for the Dr
> > in any format he wants at any time for free.....owns may be one thing,
> > but "be able to get a data dump" is another....
>
> If the vendor tries to interfere, that could well be just grounds
> for a lawsuit under HIPAA and other laws.
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