Tort gives rise to an action for damages to compensate the injured party. It seeks to give the patients what is considered a monetary equivalent of the loss suffered. In this case, the defendant can be the healthcare provider and the plaintiff can be the uninsured patient (Williams, 1951). On the other hand, a punitive damage is one set at a level intended to punish the actor so as to serve as an example to make others refrain from such mistakes. It basically warns them that dire consequences could result from their negligent behavior (Mark and Ken, 2003).
The question whether tort law should demand less of healthcare providers who treat uninsured patients is a bit debatable. Take for instance, legitimate tort claims arising from damages caused by medical malpractices. It would be impractical to harmonize the damage imposed on the defendant on grounds that they served an uninsured patient. Mistakes and negligence should be subject to punishment to prevent them from happening in the future. Therefore leniency would just be a recipe for disaster in medical practices. On the other hand, one would argue that due to high cost of treating uninsured patients, it is quite practical to reduce charges impounded on them by torts especially if such hospitals or medical providers do not get a considerable support from the government. High cost of health services added to tort damages is a financial load big enough to bring down a health facility. This would do more harm than good to the poor majority of the population who depends on its services (van Gerven, 2001).
In most cases, it is apparent that tort litigation is a very important tool for the prevention of injuries on patients. This is because doctors or physicians tend to minimize situations that might risk the life of or harm the patient in order to avoid future damages. For this reason, it is not a good idea to adjust the damages for tort features serving insured or uninsured patients. Despite this, reducing tort damages for medical providers treating uninsured patients can be beneficial in reducing instances of defensive medicine -altering clinical behavior or procedure because of the threat of malpractice liability, for example, eliminating procedures prone to complications, such as trauma surgery, and avoiding patients who had complex medical problems or were perceived as litigious. When such fears are eliminated by imposing a reasonable tort damages, then the healthcare providers are likely to serve patients more appropriately (Mark and Ken, 2003).
Tort law should demand less of healthcare providers who treat uninsured patients; this can be a major step in reducing the cases of frivolous plaintiffs where the damages sought by the injured plaintiff are perceived to be too high for the injuries sustained. This implies that existence of torts and medical malpractice system is of advantage, and its strength should not be diluted by either putting caps on non-economic damages or by decreasing the statute of limitations (Deakin and Markesinis, 2008).
In conclusion, I would confidently say that tort laws should not demand less of health care providers who treat uninsured patients since tort damages play a significant role in keeping them under check. It would also be unreasonable to discriminate health care providers in terms of the patients they treat whether insured or uninsured.
References
Deakin, Johnston and Markesinis (2008). Markesinis & Deakin’s Tort Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mark Lunney, Ken Oliphant (2003). Tort Law – Texts, Cases. 2nd Ed. Oxford University Press.
van Gerven, W. et al. (eds) (2001). Cases, Materials and Text on National, Supranational and International Tort Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Williams, G. (1951) “The Aims of the Law of Tort”, Current Legal Problems 137.