Hawaii's Supreme Court rules that the amount of medical damages awardable to a plaintiff in a negligence action is not limited to the discounted amount paid to a health care provider by Medicare or Medicaid. Bynum v. Magno (Haw., No. 25834, Nov. 18, 2004).
While vacationing in Hawaii in 1998, California resident Joseph Bynum underwent emergency heart surgery. The surgery went awry and Mr. Bynum subsequently was in intensive care in a series of California facilities and dependent on a ventilator until his death in February 2002. Medicare initially paid Mr. Bynum's medical bills, but later he and his wife, Lila, divorced to allow Mr. Bynum to become eligible for Medi-Cal (California Medicaid) and to protect the couple's life savings.
The Bynums sued various medical providers. During discovery, the Bynums produced medical bills reflecting the customary charges for the services provided by the medical facilities in which Mr. Bynum had resided. The defendants moved to limit Mr. Bynum's recovery to the fees actually paid his health care providers. The U.S. district court denied the motion and a jury returned a $2 million judgment against Dr. Joana Magno, a cardiologist. Dr. Magno appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, asserting, inter alia, that the district court erred by submitting the amount of Mr. Bynum's medical expenses to the jury as the reasonable value of their services instead of the amount negotiated by Medicare and Medicaid. The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded, but declined to resolve the issue of the medical expenses. Upon remand, the district court submitted the question to the Supreme Court of Hawaii.
The Supreme Court of Hawaii rules that because Medicare and Medicaid are social legislation programs, the collateral source rule applies and prohibits reducing a plaintiff's award of damages to reflect the discounted amount paid by either program. The court cites approvingly the AARP's amicus brief, which points out that Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries will always be entitled to less special damages because of government claims on their awards, and that therefore applying the collateral source rule helps to ameliorate the substantial gap in recovery of damages between public beneficiaries and those who are privately insured.
For the full text of this decision, go to: https://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=hi&vol=2004_11/25834&invol=1.
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