Macon Attorney Condemns Discrimination Against Overweight & Uninsured Patients
Kathy McArthur, a personal injury attorney in Macon, Georgia, recently secured a legal victory for a woman she says is the victim of discrimination.
She represented a 33-year-old woman who sought care for back pain, but doctors kept sending her away without performing the proper tests.
“The standard of care required doctors to treat it seriously and get an MRI of her spine to make sure that she didn't have exactly what she ended up having,” McArthur said in a Facebook Live interview with AskTheLawyers.com™. “So each time they would send her home, send her home, send her home.”
She argued that doctors violated the standard of care, and as a result of this delayed diagnosis, she now faces incontinence, permanent nerve damage, and other life-long conditions.
McArthur said that her lack of insurance and her weight caused the hospitals to discriminate against her.
"Both items, we find, cause people to get poor care,” she said. “And that's prejudice and discrimination against people who don't have insurance. Prejudice and discrimination against people who are tremendously overweight. They get worse care than anybody else. And in the case of the uninsured, they get sent home without any care, quite often.”
With McArthur’s help, the woman sued the emergency room doctor and the nurse who sent her home without diagnosing her condition. A jury awarded her a $5.2 million verdict, which was later reduced to $3.12 million.
She hopes that this verdict will cause Georgia’s medical providers to use less discriminatory practices.
“This trial speaks to discrimination against people who are morbidly obese and who have no insurance,” she said. “The doctors either don’t want to examine them or they give them short shrift because they’re not insured.”
Medical malpractice has been named the third leading cause of death in the United States. Every year, up to 225,000 people die due to medical errors, according to the American Medical Association.
Kathy McArthur was recently recognized by Best Lawyers as Lawyer of the Year 2019 in the area of medical malpractice in Macon, Georgia. McArthur Law Firm handles medical malpractice and wrongful death cases throughout Georgia and the nation.
To contact Kathy McArthur directly, call 888-511-3130.
Kimberly Busch
AskTheLawyers.com™, LLC
+1 970-239-1453
email us here
WATCH NOW: What Happens When Patients Get Inferior Care? at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW_LUQArkzo
1 https://www.askthelawyers.com/listing/georgia-1/macon/truck-accident-attorney/kathy-mcarthur/
2 https://www.facebook.com/AskTheLawyersNow/videos/323643748412393/