Arbitration Agreements a "Trend" in Health Care

My former hometown newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, published an article over the weekend about a growing trend in the medical profession:  the use of arbitration agreements.  According to the article:

Legal experts say such attempts to channel potentially unhappy patients away from the court system and into arbitration are becoming increasingly common in health care. Agreements to settle future disputes with binding arbitration, in which an appointed individual or small panel decides the case instead of a judge or jury, are now pervasive in contracts involving many other things we buy, including credit cards, cell phones and cars.

Temple's Bill Woodward is quoted as saying the the growth of a private judicial system "is a pretty nasty legal development" that is "just crying out for correction from Congress."

--CJR