IF PHARMACEUTICAL VACCINES & DRUGS ARE SO SAFE - why don't they pay their own indemnity insurance against causing patient harm?

Do pharmaceutical drug/vaccine companies take out indemnity insurance to safeguard themselves from causing harm to patients?

Do conventional doctors have indemnity insurance to compensate patients who are harmed by the pharmaceutical drugs/vaccines they prescribe?

If we drive a car, or live in a house, we buy car and house insurance. It costs us an annual premium. The benefit is that it ensures us if anything happens that hurts us, or causes harm to other people we are compensated. It also acts as a reminder; that we need to ensure that we keep ourselves safe because if we claim on the policy too often we know that the annual premium is likely to go up, and eventually, we might even make ourselves ‘uninsurable’. 

Both these elements are part of any insurance deal. Insurers ensure us against harm; but we agree to minimise their financial risk through sensible, careful and responsible behaviour. This reduces the risk to insurers; and reduces the size of the premiums we have to pay.

Every company has to take out insurance in case they cause harm or damage either to people or property. In return businesses are obliged to take every necessary precaution in the way it works with its customers; and when they do it helps keep their premiums at reasonable levels. 

This contract between insurers and the ensured has become part and parcel of living in a world that increasingly wants to be minimise risk. Health and safety has become more important now than it has ever been before; the precautionary principle is universally applied.

Except, of course, that the precautionary principle does NOT apply to the pharmaceutical industry, or the world of conventional medicine!

Doctors have always had to pay indemnity insurance, but in the UK over 50% of insurance premiums are now paid by government. I have written about this in 2016 and 2017, when doctors were complaining that their indemnity insurance premiums had become too high for them to pay, and government stepped in to pay them. For more details click on these links.

• What happens when doctors harm patients?
• What happens when doctors harm patients? (2)
• Indemnity. What happens when doctors harm patients? (3)

             "Indemnity insurance enables doctors to harm patients without facing the full financial consequences of doing so. For the conventional medical establishment this is important; after all, they are dealing with dangerous drugs and vaccines every day. Doctors give them to patients on the basis that they are safe, in the full knowledge that they are not only unsafe, but cause diseases far worse than the conditions for which they are prescribed, and will actually kill a certain percentage."

Pharmaceutical drug companies, too, try to ensure themselves against the harm their drugs and vaccines cause, and increasingly their ‘premiums’ are now being paid by governments too. This is the situation in the USA, for instance, particularly for vaccine damaged patients. What this means is that when pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines cause serious patient harm it is the government who pays the compensation!

As patients it is important that we all recognise this. It means that drug companies, and conventional medicine generally, are being absolved from much of the financial liability for the harm they cause to us. They no longer have to worry about increased insurance premiums as they do not pay them.

What this means is that the medical profession no longer has to be as careful about our safety, like when you or I are driving our cars!

If the government started to pay for our car insurance, would this ‘absolve’ us from causing a road accidents, or injuring, harming and killing other people? Of course not! But at least we would not have to worry about paying increased insurance premiums! This is the position of doctors, and drug companies now; they do not have to worry about the safety of what they are doing to us.

The situation is actually worse than this! Conventional medicine is the only industry (tell me if you know another) that does not have to worry about the precautionary principle. If you refused to wear a hard-hat, or proper footwear on a construction site, if you did not sit on an ergonomic officer chair in an office, if you were regularly subjected to loud noises with ear protection, if you worked on a roof without suitable safety measures - etc., etc., - these matters would be a problem in most industry. The company would take action against the employee. The H&S executive would take action against the company.

The company remains liable for any harm caused to us.

Yet pharmaceutical companies have no such worries. They can bring out drug after drug, vaccine after vaccine, all known to have serious side effects; and they can profit from them without fear of any financial penalty. Similarly, doctors can prescribe these same drugs to patients even when they are aware of the serious adverse drug reactions they can cause.

No other industry would be allowed to get away making excuses, stating that the drug is "safe" or "well tolerated", or that the ‘benefits outweigh the risk’. The amount of illness, disease and death caused by conventional medical treatment would not be accepted by any other industry. We regularly hear about new discovered and harmful ‘side effects’ caused by drugs and vaccines that conventional medicine has been using for years, decades - and yet still nothing is done to protect patients from the harm they are known to cause.

This is not only extraordinary, it is an unparalleled situation. No other industry is absolved from doing harm in the same way that conventional medicine is. And we are all paying for it by levels of chronic illness, often the result of side effects, that have never been known before.

This is why going to see a doctor, or to the hospital, is now one the most dangerous thing we ever do in our lives.

• Take this pharmaceutical drug - just be careful and report any side effects.
• You don’t need to wear a hard hat - so long as you are careful (?!!?)
  

If conventional medicine will not look after us, we must look after ourselves. This is why I no longer see a doctor, and keep well clear of hospitals. I am thankful that I discovered homeopathy, 40 years ago; I don’t need them any more. 

But be warned!

We are told that the solution to coronavirus COVID-19 is a vaccine. So, supported by government funding, lots of drug companies are rushing to produce a new vaccine. And they are all eager to discount any risk to themselves if this rushed vaccine proves to be harmful to patients.  

So governments around the world have indemnified them from this threat. If patients are harmed by these new vaccines they will not have to pay the compensation - the government will - the taxpayer will - and that's you and me!

SO ANY INCENTIVE DRUG COMPANIES MIGHT HAVE HAD TO ENSURE THAT THESE NEW VACCINES ARE SAFE IS SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCED! WILL YOU TRUST THEM?

Indemnity. What happens when doctors harm patients? (3)

I have written about the issue of medical indemnity on several previous occasions (do a search on 'indemnity' on top right hand side of this page). It is a burning issue for conventional medicine, and the situation is moving on rapidly.

Indemnity insurance enables doctors to harm patients without facing the full financial consequences of doing so.  For the conventional medical establishment this is important; after all, they are dealing with dangerous drugs and vaccines every day. Doctors give them to patients on the basis that they are safe, in the full knowledge that they are not only unsafe, but cause diseases far worse than the conditions for which they are prescribed, and will actually kill a certain percentage.

So it is little wonder that patients get angry, and sue doctors for damages caused to their health by 'medicines' that were supposed to make them better.

As my previous blogs outline, doctors within the British NHS are finding indemnity insurance premiums to be too high for them to pay. Now, we are being told that doctors are in urgent talks with the government as indemnity costs are making general practice 'untenable'. This has been reported in the GP e-magazine, Pulse, on 31st July 2017. In this, the chair of the BMA GP Committee, Dr Richard Vautrey, has said that the increases in litigation costs for defence organisations this year were ‘significantly increased’.

There is, of course, only one reason for insurance payments to rise. There are more damaged patients suing more doctors who have given them dangerous drugs and vaccines!

The consequence, according to Dr Vautrey, is mass GP list closures. He told Pulse:

               "We need to ensure that every doctor ...... needs confidence that they’ve got the indemnity to be able to work. Whether in an out-of-hours setting, extended hours, in a practices doing locum sessions without the worry of indemnity costs. We’ve made it very clear to the Department of Health, even in the last few days, that this has to happen quickly. Because there is a real risk that medical defence organisations will be forced to put up their rates to a level that will make it untenable for many GPs to work, or to do the number of sessions that they were able to do."

Vautrey said that this was despite the fact that in recent months doctors had secured reimbursement for the inflationary rises in indemnity this year and last, but this will not cover for the latest increase.

What this means is that OUR government is using OUR money to support conventional doctors prescribing pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that harm US, and kill US - in ever-increasing numbers!

This is not the only indemnity arrangement. Indemnity is given by many governments directly to pharmaceutical companies to indemnify them against the harm they do to patients (their citizens), especially with regard to vaccine injury. In the USA, for instance, the federal government has given drug companies the right to harm patients by compensate damaged patients via the Vaccine Injury Court, totally paid for by the USA taxpayer! And this kind of cosy arrangement happens throughout most of the world.

It is a conspiracy against both patients, and taxpayers!

Who gains from this conspiracy? Certainly not patients, who suffer the harm caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, and then pay for their injuries through the taxes they pay. Certainly not governments, who are being bled dry by medical insurance schemes throughout the world, dominated as they are by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that do not work, and cause us injury.

The profits of drug companies, however, are massively supported by government indemnity arrangements. They can develop dangerous drugs and vaccines without being overly concerned about the consequences to patients, and with the added assurance that their main salesmen (our doctors) will not suffer by prescribing dangerous 'medicines' to us.

Postscript
UK government makes a pledge to doctors. We will protect you from harming patients with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. 

What happens when doctors harm patients? (2)

If someone harms us, we have the right to seek legal redress. This happens in most spheres of human activity. No-one has permission, or the right, to harm other people, and get away with it.

• So what happens within the industry that causes the most deaths, year by year?
• What happens within the British NHS, which spends 25% of its budget on compensating harmed patients?

I discussed this in my previous blog, 'What happens when doctors harm patients?' where I discussed how our doctors were struggling to pay their 'indemnity insurance' premiums which were rising rapidly.

In any other industry, such indemnity insurance would be seen as a cost of doing business, that if there was any danger of harming people in the course what was being done, it was right that there should be some protection for those who were harmed.

But this rule does not apply to the conventional medical establishment!

The British government has now agreed to reimburse any prices rises in GP's indemnity insurance for the next few years. 

Let us be clear what this means. The cost of insurance rises when the cost of meeting claims rises. So medical indemnity insurance costs are rising because conventional medicine is harming more people, and the insurance companies are having to pay out more money. So much money that doctors are complaining that the cost of the insurance is now too much for them to pay. And the government responds by stomping up £60 million to pay for the harm doctors are doing to patients!

Postscript 16 April 2017)

It has been reported today, in the Pulse, that "Health minister David Mowat has said that the two-year commitment to reimburse GPs for rises to the cost of indemnity will continue in the future"!

The message to doctors is clear. Do not worry about the harm your pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are doing to patients. Carry on as before. We (the taxpayer) will pick up the cost.

Any other consumer of insurance policies would have another choice. If motor insurance premiums rise, have less accidents! If house and contents insurance premiums rise, ensure there are less claims.

This is not so for the conventional medical industry. Not only does the NHS budget set aside 25% of it budget (over £25 billion) to pay for medical mistakes, it is now going to subsidise doctors so that they can continue harming patients without having to pay the full cost of insurance.

So is indemnity insurance a problem for alternative medical practitioners? NO! Indemnity insurance from homeopaths who are members of the ARH (Alliance of Registered Homeopaths) is just £42 per year. This figure is actually less than it was when the ARH was first established over 15 years ago. And how much does the NHS pay for harm caused to patients by alternative medical practitioners. I would suggest that the figure is close to, if not actually, £0.

So why is this? 

It is because alternative medicine, and homeopathy in particular, does not harm patients. Rather than doing harm alternative therapies abide by the Hippocratic principle of 'First, do no harm'. Patients can be cured of illness and disease without the likelihood of harm or injury.

What happens when doctors harm patients?

We should all be getting used to the idea that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines cause harm to patients. This manifests itself when patients, who take drugs for one illness, develop new diseases (often called side effects), and even death.

So how do doctors protect themselves from the consequences of prescribing drugs and vaccines, that by their own admission, are inherently harmful?

The answer is that they insure themselves against the risk. If my doctor harms me, or if your doctor harms you, or your children, the consequences are borne by an insurance company - much in the same way that our cars, and our houses are covered in the event of being damaged.

There have been a series of articles on the issue of 'indemnity insurance' in the GP e-magazine, Pulse, which outlines the problem doctors are facing with this. The underlying problem is that as conventional medicine is harming an increasing number of patients so the cost of this indemnity insurance is rapidly increasing.

On 22nd March 2016 Pulse reported that there had been a large increase in 'multimillion pound compensation claims against GP's. The article refers to figures reported by the Medical Defence Union (MDU).

          "Multimillion-pound compensation claims against GPs and private consultants have risen three-fold over the past decade.... The Medical Defence Union said that it has settled 12 compensation claims in excess of £1m in 2015.

It was stated that in 2005, just 4 settled claims exceeded £1m, whilst there was only one claim of that amount in 1995.

And it is not just conventional doctors that are facing this problem. On 16th February 2016 Pulse reported a 'Sharp rise in negligence claims against practice nurses'. The MDU stated that the number of clinical negligence claims against practice nurses have risen sharply over the past decade.

          "Only two nurse practitioner members reported clinical negligence claims to the MDU in 2005 but climbed to 25 in 2015."

So is this a problem for the conventional medical establishment? In an earlier article, on 4th February 2016, 'Out-of-hours group increased recruitment threefold', Pulse reported that a GP out-of-hours service provider had offered doctors free indemnity cover and that this had boosted recruitment threefold over the last six months. The company, Vocare, said it recruited 175 GPs to work out of hours during the past six month period, compared to just 60 in the six-month period prior to this when it struggled to fill shifts.

          "A survey by Urgent Health UK recently found that four out of five out-of-hours GPs said spiralling indemnity fees are limiting the number of out-of-hours shifts they’re willing to do."

The article mentions that doctor recruitment was at 'an all-time low', the implication being that doctors are increasingly reluctant to practise their medical skills, dominated as they are by the prescription of pharmaceutical drugs, in case they damage their patients, and are brought to task for doing so.

Similar news came through five days later, on 9th February 2016, when Pulse reported that 'Paying out-of-hours indemnity added 15,000 shifts this winter'. It stated that over 500 GPs had booked extra out-of-hours shifts under NHS England’s £2m winter scheme "to cover their medical indemnity costs". This totalled 14,264 extra shifts made available to patients needing out-of-hours GP care. The article stated that NHS England will run the 'experimental scheme' until the end of March "while continuing discussions with the GPC on longer-term solutions to the problem of rising indemnity fees for out-of-hours work."

At the bottom of this article was another feature, entitled "We need to protect GPs from litigation. Here's how." It stated that the scheme was introduced "after increasing evidence that the cost of indemnity fees was putting GPs off taking on out-of-hours shifts, with a Pulse survey revealing that half of GPs turn down out-of-hours shifts because the cover is too expensive."

NHS England said that they introduced the scheme as indemnity fees were acting as "a barrier to delivering care."

So the message is clear. Doctors, who provide us with conventional medical care, are increasingly reluctant to do so because of the cost of indemnity insurance, that is, that cost to them if they harm patients by their treatment. Doctors, it would appear, are more prepared to do so if they do not have to bear the cost of insuring themselves against such an eventuality.

GP practices have also expressed their concern about the cost of indemnity insurance, and whether it covers their staff in all eventualities. On 14th March 2016 Pulse sought to answer the question 'How do I make sure all my staff have appropriate indemnity'. This article started with the observation that GP indemnity costs were "spiralling out of control", quoting the Pulse report that they rose by an average of 25.5% in 12 months leading up to November 2015. Yet the article goes on to explain that some indemnity cover can leave staff "without the necessary cover, which can be dangerous for the practice, as well as the affected staff".

So the conventional medical establishment has a problem. Its drugs and vaccines can cause harm to patients. When patients are harmed it can lead to expensive litigation. To protect themselves from this litigation doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others need to be insured.

Yet conventional medicine is now causing so much harm the spiralling cost of indemnity insurance had become an important issue, affecting whether doctors are prepared to offer their medicine to patients.

So the government recognises indemnity insurance is a problem for the conventional medical establishment, and decides to intervene - in order to encourage doctors to practise their trade! On 21st April 2016 Pulse reported that 'NHS promises to address rising indemnity fees but falls short of full funding'. What they are proposing, apparently, is a problem for the conventional medical profession.

          "NHS England is not going to cover GP indemnity costs as part of its general practice rescue deal, despite calls from the profession to do so, instead focusing on a ‘discussion’ to address rising fees."

Instead of fully funding the cost of indemnity insurance, NHS England is proposing to look at how costs can be contained, or reduced, or perhaps to enable new 'multi-speciality community practices' to take on corporate indemnity cover for all their GPs under one policy.

The article also discusses a proposal that there should be a cap on costs that claimaint lawyers can recover from clinical negligence claims. In response, NHS England said it did not believe that 'Crown Indemnity' was actually ‘the intent of the profession’, as this would ‘mean it is not possible to sue for damages and that the small minority of patients who had suffered harm as a result of clinical negligence would not have recourse to any financial compensation’.

So is this is what our doctors want ? Full indemnity against harming patients, without any cost to them? This series of Pulse articles have described what doctors (and other medical practitioners) want but it might be useful to consider what this means for patients. So let's use an analogy.

Suppose I drive a dangerous car (all cars are dangerous) on the roads, and I know that driving too fast can cause serious injury to other road users. In order to do so I pay for motor insurance every year, but as I and my colleagues have caused a series of serious accidents over a period of many years, I find that my insurance premiums are now sky-high! They have become a serious expense. They have actually raised questions about whether I should continue to risk driving my car.

So I persuade someone else to pay my insurance premiums for me! And actually, it is YOU (as a tax payer) who have taken on this responsibility. I am extremely happy about this! It means that I can continue to drive my dangerous car, I can drive it as fast and recklessly as I want, and I do not have to be too concerned about the serious damage I might do to other peoples lives.

Pharmaceutical drugs companies have achieved a similar result, with governments throughout the world providing them with indemnity against the consequences of any harm caused by their drugs and vaccines. It is not the companies who profit from their drugs and vaccines that pay for the harm they cause to patients - it is patients. And if their drugs and vaccines lead to expensive litigation, the government, courtesy of the taxpayer, will pay all the costs.

Now, conventional doctors want to have equal treatment! In the world of conventional medicine, it would seem, the responsibility for causing harm to patients has been taken away from those who cause it.

Postscript
For an update of this information, go to this blog, "What happens when doctors harm patients? (2)"

A further update is available here. "Indemnity. What happens when doctors harm patients? (3)"