Provider-Patient Arbitration Agreement: Fill & Download for Free

The Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. 1 et seq.See, the original idea was to let merchants who had a contract dispute agree to have a third merchant resolve the dispute. Makes perfect sense. Every industry has its own little quirks, so merchants often agreed to use an arbitrator who understood the context. But then the loser would go to court afterwards, and the ignorant judge would ignore the arbitrator’s informed opinion. Therefore, Congress passed the FAA, requiring courts to enforce arbitration awards.Problem: Congress forgot to say anything about “merchants,” or “commercial contracts.” Probably because they couldn’t imagine that anyone would WANT an arbitrator in any other context. Like, if you were a doctor, why would you want a commercial guildmaster deciding your malpractice case? And consumers didn’t really use written contracts much anyway. And if they did, they could always take their business elsewhere.But the world changed. Now, consumers need written contracts for all sorts of necessary purchases. Cars, cell phones, you name it. We sign contracts to get medical care, go skiing, work in low-skill jobs, pretty much everything but groceries. And most providers have cartelized—you’re not dealing with one small tradesman out of 100 in your county, you’re probably dealing with an effective monopoly. You’ve got no choice but to accept arbitration.And the Supreme Court, bless their hearts, have steadfastly refused to read any restrictions into the law. The statute says to enforce arbitration agreements, so that’s by Godfrey what we’re going to do. In every context. No matter what the disparity in bargaining power. We now have arbitration agreements for patients, employees, car buyers, phone contracts, pretty much everything.Why is this a problem?Well:1) A lot of arbitration agreements require confidentiality. The company could be ripping everybody off and getting sued every day. You’ll never find out, because all of the cases are secret. Or at least, you’ll never know the details.2) There’s no precedent. The arbitrator doesn’t have to do the same thing Tuesday that he did Monday in an identical case. Unlike a court. So your lawyer doesn’t know if you can win, or by how much. Makes it a lot harder to know whether suing is worthwhile, and harder to find a good lawyer to take the case.3) A lot of arbitration agreements prohibit class actions. Is your bank stealing $10/month from 500,000 accounts? Each owner has to sue separately. Guess how often that’s going to happen.4) Many people would put this one first: what if the arbitrator is corrupt? How are you ever going to find out? Nobody’s auditing him. There’s no oversight. He doesn’t even have to be taking bribes or consciously fixing the cases, he could just naturally tend to side with the company that always hires him, instead of the consumer he’ll only see once. Each individual decision could be perfectly defensible, but somehow, they keep coming out the same way. I have to say, I haven’t personally seen this happen. I’m a little dubious that it’s as common as some people say. But how can I really know?5) The law can’t develop without new jury verdicts and judicial opinions. We may be stuck using precedent from 20 years ago, before the way people conducted business changed due to new technology, because every dispute in that industry since then has been in arbitration. Or worse, all the new precedent is grossly atypical, because the defendant is the one guy in the industry who didn’t use an arbitration clause in his contracts, because he’s crazy.Bills to change this stupid law get proposed every 10 years or so, but industry lobbyists always shout them down. There’s one moving through Congress right now, we’ll see what happens. I’m not holding my breath.

Maybe in what Trump apparently thinks of as “the good old days” when pre-existing conditions might have warranted an insurance underwriter’s denial of coverage. But, in the era of Obamacare, no one can be denied coverage of one of the ten essential benefits without risking the wrath of a State-based insurance commission.Of course, more and more insurance providers are demanding that customers accept a binding arbitration agreement but in most cases, their denial of services has less to do with the life of the patient and more to do with the cost to the insurance company.

Two problems in the US are health insurance companies and excessive malpractice awards.Insurance companies provide a layer between health care providers and patients. All their employees, their bonuses, their office space and other real estate and their stock holders’s dividends are paid for from a portion of health insurance premiums. They make money as a buffer between patients and the actual health care providers. Unfortunately, in some documented cases, they have declined to pay for needed expensive treatments…thus increasing their profit margin.Malpractice has to be addressed. Unfortunately, often it is a jackpot situation with incredible payouts. There are lawyers that get quite rich by working the health care system. As a result doctors pay very large monthly fees for liability insurance. Some medical fields pay a lot more than others causing some to avoid certain fields of practice.The most efficient health system in the US is Kaiser Permanente. It is self insured eliminating the insurance middle man. Patient/members sign arbitration agreements to belong - eliminating much of the high malpractice premiums other doctors pay. Kaiser over the years has evolved and is a far superior provider than it was even 30 years ago. Unfortunately, Kaiser Permanente is not available in every state and for most Americans it’s not even a choice.There may be other self insuring HMO’s in the US, but I’m not aware of them.A big problem for the US is insurance companies provide large campaign donations to our politicians - both republican and democrats. Kind of hard to come up with better systems when the people responsible for finding a better course are in the pockets of insurance companies (another thing your health insurance pays for).