Posted on 10/19/2004 7:24:39 AM PDT by Osage Orange
Shot full of holes: Tort system creates vaccine shortage
Oklahoman Editorial
President Bush has said he won't get a flu shot this year, so a more deserving citizen can have his dosage. And what is John Kerry's noble gesture regarding the flu vaccine shortage? To claim that Bush is responsible for it!
Kerry need look no further than his trial lawyer running mate and his own Senate record to get a clue as to why there isn't enough vaccine to go around. Americans need look no further than the Kerry-Edwards ticket to realize that no serious tort reform would occur in a Democratic administration.
Precipitating cause for the shortage is the shutdown of a British vaccine manufacturer. The underlying cause goes directly to the heart of the tort reform debate.
"Vaccines are the one area of medicine where trial lawyers are almost completely responsible for the problem ... Lawyers have won the vaccine game so completely that nobody wants to play," William Tucker writes in the Oct. 25 edition of The Weekly Standard.
Tucker works for the Discovery Institute, a free-market think tank involved with legal system reform. He's written a book on the topic for 2005 publication called "Civil Lynchings."
How are trial lawyers keeping flu vaccines in short supply? By keeping vaccine manufacturers in short supply. The world's second-largest vaccine supplier was shut down not by lawyers but by British regulators. This wouldn't have mattered except that only one other company supplies the American market.
How are trial lawyers keeping vaccine makers in short supply? By imposing a "liability without fault" concept on the industry. Tucker notes there were 26 U.S. companies making vaccines in 1967. Today there are four, and none of them make the low-margin flu vaccine.
Vaccines don't produce enough revenue to cover the potential liability resulting from the fraction of the population that has a bad reaction. Give 100 people a glass milk, Tucker points out, and a few of them will get sick from it. But that doesn't mean the dairy industry should be shut down.
"Liability without fault" replaced the notion of simple negligence, meaning that vaccine makers could be held liable only if they'd actually done something wrong -- not because their vaccine caused a bad reaction. The majority is thus punished because of problems occurring to a small minority. Lawyers profit.
Under liability without fault, Tucker writes, manufacturers can be held responsible for harm from their products whether blameworthy or not. "Add to that the jackpot awards that come from pain and suffering and punitive damages, and you have a legal climate that no manufacturer wants to risk."
Perhaps the solution is to price vaccines so high that legal exposure is covered. But that would keep many people from getting a flu shot. Americans are already up in arms at the high cost of medicine.
Kerry can bark all he wants about Bush being responsible for the vaccine shortage, but he's done nothing to help create a more stable legal environment. And Edwards? He's the poster boy for a tort system that refuses an inoculation of common sense.
Good line..!!
BTTT
And I happen to think that there's many Elephants in both houses that have JD behind their names...that pressure the WH...not to push this issue too hard.
Maybe I'm wrong.....
That is correct. Corporate lawyers and defense attorneys contribute to Republicans and cluck over the excesses of the plaintiff's bar-- but when push comes to shove, they are all riding the same gravy train, a train that that you and I are shoveling fuel into.
Nobody in the legal extortion industry wants to see tort reform. If it is to be, it will have to be rammed down the throat of all lawyers by the non-lawyer majority.
I'm in favor of reforms that would put 90% of lawyers totally out of business, ambulance chasers and corporate drones alike.
-ccm
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.