Sunday, March 18, 2007

Logical conclusion?

Many women who choose homebirth do so because they believe that birth is "not a medical condition" and almost never has any serious complications. In that case, isn't it logical that homebirth providers should seek to increase their income by forgoing malpractice insurance? Malpractice insurance has two purposes. One is to protect the provider against financial ruin; the other is to offer patients financial recourse if the provider does something wrong. However, if you assume that nothing is going to go wrong, why should the provider cut into his or her income by buying insurance? It much easier and dramatically more profitable to require the patient to give up her legal right to sue.

Is requiring a patient to sign away her legal right to sue the logical conclusion of homebirth advocacy, or is it a discriminatory practice? If a homebirth patient can be required to sign away her right to sue in order to get the medical care that she wants, why can't other providers require their patients to sign away the right to sue as a condition of medical care? If homebirth providers can require patients to give up the right to sue, why can't hospital based providers require patients to give up the right to sue as a condition of giving birth in a hospital?

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