Posted on 08/24/2009 7:49:03 PM PDT by BigKahuna
With the battle over ObamaCare heating up to white-hot temperatures -- which promise to become even hotter in the fall -- I became a little curious today to see who the heavy hitters are, donations-wise, to Democrats in their fight to keep all those un-American, well-dressed mobs currently invading August town halls across the country from seizing the reins of power in a coup d’état of astounding proportions.
… Naturally, the top spot's occupied by our favorite group of folks; the lawyers. For 2008, they somehow managed to rub two nickels together -- to the tune of 126.8 million dollars . That was good for 78% of the total amount donated, with Barack Obama being that year's top dollar gatherer.
… Anyway, as of today, those wascally wabbit litigators are busily donating 84% of all their money (versus 15% to Republicans) for the 2010 campaign -- currently at 13.1 million dollars -- to people like Harry Reid, the top recipient of their money for 2010. Do you think the legal eagles know something we don't?
… By the way, no Republican makes the Top-10 for 2010 in terms of receiving money from any of these groups. With Reid at #1 and Gillibrand at #2, the rest of the hall of shame is mostly made up of Democrats either facing reelection or sitting on powerful congressional committees. The senior senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, garners top dollar from 4 out the 10 contributor groups, with Reid also raking in the most from another group besides the lawyers (#6; lobbyists).
Happily -- at least in this moment in time -- all those town hall anti-ObamaCare protestors and their homemade and hand-lettered signs seems to be giving the President's extremely powerful allies a run for their money.
(Excerpt) Read more at entitlementsyndrome.com ...
Notice the lack of tort reform in the Obama plan as an obvious way to lower medical costs.
Duly noted
Never, ever buy a product from GE.
That’s why lawyers are giving all their gold away. They’re frightened to death that something that might really lower the cost of health care — tort reform — could find its way into a compromise bill.
It may not make that much of a difference but it is a reform that is a necessary part of a comprehensive step to help lower the overall cost.
The approach is called “Rent Seeking”, to bribe the legislature into makeing favorable conditions for your business activity. To avoid the evils of rent seeking, the Constitution grants only limited powers. Alas the lawyers got around that through the (Interstate) commerce clause.
I developed an aversion to GE when I repaired by grandfather’s TV in the early ‘60s. It was in a beautiful wood cabinet but inside it was incredibly cheaply built.
To this day, they make the very worst TVs. Emerson and other low end names are far better.
We need single payer nationalized legal services. 100K annual compensation caps for lawyers. Government legal services for all should be a right.
I wish that someone would submit a bill just for grins.
“We need single payer nationalized legal services. 100K annual compensation caps for lawyers. Government legal services for all should be a right.
I wish that someone would submit a bill just for grins.”
Man...I’d vote for something like that!
Wouldn’t it be great if lawyer emissions were subject to “cap and trade”?
Let’s see-—taxpayer funds go to Brazil to explore for oil.
Profits get funneled to George Soros who in turn pumps some of it back to the Dems. So who is really funding the Dems?
Why it’s all of us taxpayers with our money—sort of like a stimulus for Dems in an indirect way. We don’t call them ‘Rats for nothing now!
My water heater went bust last month and one of the brands to choose from new ones was GE. Went with Whirlpool brand instead-—assembled in Johnson City, Tn. NOT buying GE crap if I can help it.
I’m telling everybody, Reid is going down hard. Stay tuned.
Niagra Falls. . .slowly I turn.....and inch by inch. . .step by step. . .
If you remove all the “tort reform” costs, you are talking about LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of total health care costs. You ain’t going to save no money by tort reform.
Some doctors may see a savings in malpractice insurance, but it does not decrease health costs. The defensive medicine savings never seems to happen either. It seems doctors, even in states that have capped damages and otherwise deprived citizens of their rights, “defensive medicine” just keeps on being practiced.
I wonder if maybe greedy doctors just blame it on the lawyers, so no one will think they are ordering unnecessary tests to make extra money for them and their buddies? Naw, doctors are never greedy.
If you are interested in the “facts” as opposed to the usual line of BS that gets passed around on this issue, please try this link:
http://insurance-reform.org/TrueRiskF.pdf.
parsy, who hopes you find this helpful
WOW. The doctors I know will be very surprised to learn how little their exorbitant and rapidly rising insurance rates contribute to the problem /s.
You are probably right. The insurance companies would rather blame it on victims and their lawyers. Maybe this report will wake them up.
But first, they will have to read the report. That is a very hard thing to get people to do, because once they do, they have no excuse for going around spouting off a bunch of nonsense about tort reform.
I wonder if you have any ideas how one might go about convincing someone to take the time to learn the facts? You know this might take a whole 10 to 15 minutes to read, and that seems like a small investment to me on such an important issue.
parsy, who would appreciate your input on how I might talk someone into becoming informed about an issue
Come on, most fringe movements fund themselves by robbing banks or selling drugs. The dems do it by random shake downs known as torts; the lawyers split the loot with the DNC to keep the racket going while the idiots in the media pimp for them.
Meanwhile the average victim of malpractice gets, ta dum: zilch, zip, nada. The lawyers are out chasing the great sob stories to cash in millions to fund a Senate run in North Carolina. Maybe there ought to be more suits, not less, but reasonable suits, not the law suit lottery. The only way insurers and doctors can deal with the lottery is to hike prices or exit the business.
And I just gotta say this: if the lawyers know better than doctors and if they care so much and they are soo concerned about the state of medical care, why didn't they go to medical school?
That is one thing the Canadians have on us, they have a reasonable tort system. Used to go there a lot on business. It was funny to look at their phone books. In the US the ad would be “I'm Joe Schmoe and I settled for $43M for my client who was hit by a car!” In Canada it was more like “I'm Jock Schmoet and I settled for $23K for my client who was hit by a car!”
“Maybe there ought to be more suits, not less, but reasonable suits, not the law suit lottery. “
That is one of the smartest things I have heard a freeper say on this issue for quite a while. Seriously. Somewhere between 100,000 to 200,000 people are killed by malpractice each year.
Most malpractice goes unreported for several reasons. Chief is cover ups by medical providers. On the known ones, the standards for malpractice are high, and about the only suits lawyers can afford to take are the great cases with higher damages. This is why the “flood of frivolous law suits” nonsense, is well, nonsense. Lawyers can’t afford to put $60,000 upfront into a frivolous case and then wait 4 years to get it thrown out or lose in court. And doctors do win most suits.
With the malpractice costs coming in at less than 1% of total health care costs, there is room for improvement.
Doctors and other health care providers could lower the amount of malpractice, if they will quit blaming lawyers for their problems and start looking at the underlying malpractice.
The link I gave has some really interesting facts on page 19 from A M Best, hardly a biased source.
For example, payouts on malpractice insurance is less than $5 billion per year. Premiums, from which that is paid, is about $11 billion. Total health care costs (page 14) are about $2.4 trillion.
Do the math for yourself. I wonder why nobody who clamors for tort reform ever tells you these numbers? Wouldn’t that be the rational starting point for any discussion about tort reform?
Maybe for the same reason the pro-abortion people just hate those pictures of embryos.
parsy, who says you may find the link fascinating
Most malpractice goes unreported for several reasons. Chief is cover ups by medical providers.
If they're unreported and covered-up, how do we know its "somewhere between 100,000 to 200,000" deaths?
Well, you can google it. And you can read the link. You can go to wiki under malpractice, is one place I think I saw it.
parsy, who says Harvard Medical School reviewed 31,000 medical records as the basis for one estimate
Try this link for a comprehensive look at the malpractice problem.
parsy, who hopes this link works
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