DAY 19

On Wednesday morning Laura finished her assignments about 10:45 and turned on the TV. A commercial was running for Mark Frig, the local TTBO lawyer. “If you want legal representation for personal injury or wrongful death, just turn the book over,” his ad proclaimed. “Insurance companies make money by keeping settlements small.” Laura chuckled. When her dad first heard this he said, “And Frig makes money driving up insurance rates. So he gets you more money and he takes one third.”

“Are you sure of that?” Laura asked.

“It’s called “contingent fee”, if you get nothing, he gets nothing. You get anything, he gets a third of it, off the top. You can actually hire him, get a bigger settlement and get less money. You can even get nothing. Say the insurance company offers thirty thousand, you have him take the case and he gets you forty two thousand, he takes thirteen and you get twenty nine.”

“So he is betting he can get you something, at least enough to make it worthwhile for him.”

“Yes. And because he makes enough on the smaller cases he can take on long shots that pay off big if you win. It is good that people have representation and Frig and men like him should be paid but there are excesses, where people get big settlements that are not in line with the actual damage and the lawyers get far more than the work is worth. I think that is morally wrong.”

She looked at the number of bone cancer cases at Mercy, there were thirty-nine, only eighteen survived. It was a bleak view, twenty-one deaths. With the other two hospitals together, there were one hundred forty-three, of them one hundred nine survived. That meant thirty-four died.

She remembered the night she researched the cancer. She found her notes. Of thirty-nine positive results in one hospital there were only eighteen survivors. Of one hundred forty-three in the other two there were one hundred nine survivors. She looked at the numbers. The real death percentage at Mercy was twenty one divided by thirty nine or fifty four percent. The other two hospital deaths of thirty four would be fifty four percent of sixty three. So if the other hospitals had a fifty four percent survival rate only sixty three of the patients had cancer. The difference between one hundred forty three and sixty three was eighty. That meant that somewhere near eighty patients had unnecessary amputations.