Individualism, Social Responsibility, and Litigiousness

Okay, after the recent blather about not noticing interesting features of NZ, here are two case studies.

The Dentist. A dental school offers free services from its hopefully moderately trained students. A mother takes her child there. The child has several cavities. In cleaning out the holes in preparation for the filling, the dental intern accidentally drills all the way through the primary (childhood) teeth, and all the way through to the permanent teeth still waiting beneath the gum line. Later in life, this causes severe dental problems for the patient. Her permanent teeth are ruined, she’s in severe discomfort, and she must go through several bouts of painful oral surgery.

The Headmaster. A headmaster/principal/CEO/whatever of a secondary school does an undeniably awful job. The school is run into the ground financially, important decisions go un-made, the quality of education declines.

Here’s the question for any Americans out there: how should the dentist and the headmaster be treated in reaction to these cases? My initial intuition is this: the dentist should be sued, and the headmaster should be fired.

Here in NZ, they do things a bit differently. The dentist can’t be sued. This is simply a non-litigious society, and so rather than allow individuals to extract compensation from other individuals, there’s a social insurance scheme, run by the ACC. This covers things like medical bills, although there’s no way to secure those notorious American benefits for vague “pain and suffering.” I guess that’s all in the spirit of the collective responsibility.

I’m mixed on whether I think this is a good thing. It’s good in that, first, interns (and the like) can train without fear of ending up destitute. Second, it’s good that the social compensation scheme isn’t run amok. Finally, the ACC covers not only individual harms, but sporting accidents and just about anything else, and there’s something nice about living in a society that says “Hey, whatever happens, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”

The downside is that, as I see things, horribly negligent dentists (and the like) who ruin a child’s permanent teeth should be held personally responsible to some degree. But they’re not. This is where the Headmaster case becomes instructive. Do you agree that the headmaster should be fired? If so, prepare to be disappointed. Apparently, it’s NZ law that once a job search has been completed with due diligence, it is very hard for someone to get fired. At that point, a law kicks in that says that it’s the employer’s responsibility to make sure the employee is doing a good job. So, in the Headmaster case, the negligent employee, rather than being fired, was kept on the job, and the employer had to hire an external consultant to come in and teach/cajole him into doing a better job. Basically, it turns out, you can’t be fired here. (That makes the tenure process a little redundant, I’ve recently discovered; but it makes promotion that much more significant, so I guess it’s a wash.)

So, in my humble opinion, score 1 point for NZ on social as opposed to individual insurance for injuries and health care; score 1 point for the US on holding people accountable for gross negligence.