Posted on 08/27/2009 4:08:40 PM PDT by fiscon1
This video is so stunning that I am embarrassed I didn't notice it until now.
(Excerpt) Read more at theeprovocateur.blogspot.com ...
My apologies if you have seen this already.
Honesty from Howard Dean is pretty shocking.
OMW! That is stunning.
I loved the guy giving Moran the business over the ID!
Loving it. They are giving the Repubs plenty to talk about in the future. If they have the guts.
That clip needs to go viral.
Maybe Sarah Palin will link it on her Facebook so every liberal blogger will report on it as a her smearing Dean
I just posted this on SP’s Facebook page.
Hope she reads ALL of her fan comments.
Can you tell me how to get her FB page because I tried one that was posted here at FR but it wasn’t active for some reason. Thanks in advance.
Sorry, I really have brain gas tonight. I was thinking of Twitter. Sheesh! Sorry.
I can’t find her new twitter. She uses Facebook.
Feeling froggy?
Tort Reform. . . .TORT REFORM! . . .Slowly I turn. . .and step by step. . .inch by inch . . . .
Tort reform is a non issue. There is not enough money involved to accomplish anything. ONE HALF OF ONE PERCENT of total health care costs:
http://insurance-reform.org/TrueRiskF.pdf.
Scroll down to page 29 for the numbers, but the whole article is a great read.
parsy, who is hopping to it
Parsy,
Please identify where in the paper you linked is the examination of how the cost of defending against these lawsuits - both in terms of extra preemptive tests and actual legal fees - is accounted for. The article appears to only be in regard to malpractice insurance.
I see the connection, but find it much less than comprehensive with respect to tort reform.
On page 29, you will find a chart which provides both he amount of yearly malpractice premiums and the related payouts to victims and lawyers.
Victims’ lawyers pay is in included in the payouts. Defense lawyers would be included in the premiums. Most of the insurance companies’ income is missing because I do not think investment income is included. Insurance companies try to string out settlements as long as possible, usually settling the day before trial. This increases insurance company’s profit and payout to defense lawyers.
Re: defensive medicine costs, I am sure there are some, but there appear to be no good studies on how much. I have seen estimates range from $100 billion to $200 billion, and 10% or $240 billion. There seems to be some problem figuring out how much of the extra tests are because of fear of lawyers, and how much is by doctors to pad the bill.
For egs, the extra c-sections are often blamed on John Edwards, however as one article pointed out, Medicare pays an extra $5,000 for c-sections, private insurance even more. So are doctors doing them for fear of evil lawyers, or for the extra five grand?
In the article I linked above, there is another link to a New Yorker article, “gawande”. Go to that and a Texas lawyer admits its not the lawyers, its the extra money.
If lawyers get 40% of $4.5 billion, that about $2 billion for the greedy lawyers. If doctors order $240 billion in extra test, that’s well,. . .$240 billion for the health care industry. Do the math. Read the link.
parsy, who reports, and let’s you decide
parsy, who says work
Here’s another link you may find interesting. $60 billion per year in medicare fraud. That would be about 30 times the $2 billion in greedy lawyer payouts.
http://www.law.uh.edu/healthlaw/perspectives/2009/(CC)%20Heat.pdf
parsy, who says they found at least 53 greedy doctors in Detroit
I believe that Medicare is actually about $440 billion in fraud.
If so, that would be 1/6 of total health care costs.
parsy, who wonders if here is a link,
Wikipedia, where information is plentiful but dubious.
Oh. I get it. It went over my head. Very sly of you. FWIW, I called my mommy to double check some info I remembered from when my step-dad was alive. I offer it again, copying from another “tort reform” thread I was on today:
My step dad practiced over 50 years, some at a very well known, prestigious clinic. He was old school. He predicted back in the 80’s that greedy doctors would “break” medicare. He was right. He used to fuss about the “blood gas” tests getting run by all the doctors in the ER.
Several of his acquaintances, ran clinics where they would run thru hordes of little poor kids to get their tonsils out, or old poor men to get TURs.
He did not run a bunch of tests, only got sued once, and won that one.
parsifal’s mommy, was a nurse for years and years. She has had two botched surgeries. Both happened by doctors scheduling up to twelve surgeries per day. On the first one, she kept calling the doctor to see what could have gone wrong, because she knew something was wrong. The doctor did not know, denied anything was wrong, and kept brushing her off. The problem got a great deal worse. Finally she went to another doctor who was able to ameliorate the problem. When we met with the risk management person, he happened to mention that he had popped the symptoms into his computer and what had happened was blah blah blah.
I leapt. Why I asked then, if he a risk manager, who had never been to medical school could figure out what was wrong within a few minutes, could not the specialist who had done the surgery have done the same thing and kept the problem from getting worse? Was it because he was so busy doing 12 surgeries per day. (And not properly sterilizing his equipment because he was not leaving sufficient time between the surgeries.) Not having a good answer, it then became settlement time. I still remember the look on the risk managers face—all proud of himself for discovering the answer—and then turning to complete bumbling stupidity when he could not think of a good answer to the question.
parsifal’s mommy had back surgery recently. The first one, done by a friend, was botched. Again, the surgeon scheduled up to 12 surgeries per day. The surgeon who fixed it, told her on the QT that the first surgery had been botched and how. She didn’t make a claim. She could have, but lo and behold, the medical records had been either altered or phonied up. All sorts of post-op notes were in there allegedly doing all kinds of care, that hadn’t actually been done.
parsifal’s mommy, a feisty old woman, got p*ssed off when she found out she could not get two lipid tests in one year on medicare. Meanwhile, up the road, a doctor is running a “medicare penile implant” mill for old codgers. The doctor is running them thru left and right on medicare’s dime. She thought this somewhat unfair, wrote her congressmen and a well known conservative pundit. Nothing came of it.
My stepdad was right. Doctors are breaking medicare. Do the math. $240 billion maybe for doctors in defensive medicine costs, that do not seem to go down in “tort reformed” states, versus maybe $2 billion for greedy lawyers (40% of $4.5 billion).
Anyway, I posted that earlier. I am not “down” on doctors, I just think there needs to be a closer look at all their pleas to be protected from the suers and less histrionics about something that is LESS THAN ONE HALF PERCENT of total health care costs.
parsy, who does think lawyers should be protected from malpractice claims
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