Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor mortality ratings

Absolutely. You can sue for pretty much anything. Winning is another story, but doctor's don't generally make sympathetic defendants. Juries know they have money and that they pay huge insurance fees to cover these cases. Of course, after losing a big case where the insurance company pays out millions of dollars, they likely become uninsurable and unemployable. But hey, the money is good until you hit the anti-lottery.

My father was an anesthesiologist (who retired in good standing), and I remember him telling me a case he read about a Caesarean section. The surgeon was using an electrocautery pen to sear closed the ends of blood vessels. The surgeon set down the pen on the surgical cart, lifted the baby out, set the baby on the cart, and the baby's heel touched the pen. Now the baby has a small scar on the bottom of his/her heel for life. The parents sued the surgeon, the cart nurse overseeing the cart, and the anesthesiologist was close to the surgical cart. All 3 defendants settled out of court, since babies almost always win jury cases against rich doctors, regardless of merit.

The litigant's lawyer would almost certainly bring up a below median survival rate as evidence of a pattern of gross incompetence.

Also, of course, in the U.S., I believe only governments are immune to lawsuits (sovereign immunity) without their consent. The courts have consistently ruled that many rights, including the right to sue, cannot be legally waived by contract. In a similar way, if you sell yourself into slavery by entering into a contract that waives your right against unlawful detention, that contract cannot be legally enforced.

My grandfather was an anesthesiologist. My dad was an anesthesiologist (and did well enough on the MCAT to go to med school after 3 years of undergrad... practiced medicine without an undergrad degree... med school is too competitive today to do such a thing). I was a good student: I graduated from MIT. However, my brother and I saw all of the BS and stress (anesthesiologists have a high suicide rate) and constantly rotating sleep/work shifts and both went into engineering.

Finger ----------------> Moon

^ You're looking at this.

Unbelievable! The five year survival rate for lung cancer is only 18%! Even when the cancer is localized the five year survival rate is only 55%![1]

It's irresponsible for the doctor to not give a reasonable prognosis!

[1]http://www.lung.org/lung-health-and-diseases/lung-disease-lo...

I do not intend to diminish the suffering your mother has gone through or, in consequence, your mental agony. I myself have watched a close relative suffer. Treatment that just prolongs the agony is hellish and pointless.

Having said that, I just wanted to add a small message of hope for those in similar situations. Atleast in the case of lung cancer, the situation is vastly improved now. The variants of lung cancer that are most prevalent now can be managed with oral medication alone and the patients can recover to go on and lead normal lives. This is from experience seeing another close relative suffer terribly from lung cancer (mainly because diagnosis of lung cancer itself is very hard as the symptoms show up very late and can be mistaken for other issues) and has now miraculously recovered and is back onto his normal routine.

If you undergo a procedure whereby you could die it doesn't mean every cadaver is a paycheck. It means that if your death is a consequence of negligence or malfeasance that family has a recourse.

This is entirely reasonable and I cannot imagine how you could have a medical system where you can't?

What do you do if your surgeon operates drunk and kills you? Hope that a bunch of other doctors don't close ranks and protect their own at your expense? Why would anyone have any faith in their fellow man. People are terrible.