Business vs Consumer prospective: health care

[tru_m.a.c]

So I was reading the NYT today and came across this section in an article about hospitals and malpractice suits:

The story is about how some new york hospitals don't have malpractice insurance. Like zip. 0. (That should provide insight to the first paragraph of the quote)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/n...ractice-safety-net.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&hpw

“Malpractice insurance is a lawsuit magnet,” said a former hospital administrator who did not want to be named to avoid upsetting potential employers. Malpractice lawyers said that underinsured hospitals put them in a tricky position.

“There is some arm-twisting,” said Alan Fuchsberg, a personal injury lawyer in Manhattan, as plaintiffs are told that they will end up with nothing and push the hospitals into bankruptcy if they do not “just take the little bit” that is offered to them.

“You don’t know if that’s really true or not, and it’s very difficult to advise your client,” he said.

The lawyers said they were often forced to take payment on installment, or to try to pin more blame on physicians, who may have their own insurance. Martin Seinfeld, a malpractice lawyer, said he had had three cases this year involving Jamaica Hospital and New York Hospital Queens in which hospital lawyers had held out the specter of bankruptcy if he did not reduce his demands.

When a hospital is bankrupt, its creditors, including malpractice plaintiffs, are often forced to accept less than they are owed through litigation. “They’re forcing settlement terms for payouts over six or seven years,” Mr. Seinfeld said, “because they put you in the position of saying, ‘Fine, close a community hospital.’ ”

my question to the HL folks is, quite simple, if you're in the hospitals position what do you do???

if you're in the patients position, what do you do???

and does your political ideology play a role in this situation