Posted on 08/21/2009 7:14:29 AM PDT by DogBarkTree
President Obama's health care "reform" plan has met with significant criticism across the country. Many Americans want change and reform in our current health care system. We recognize that while we have the greatest medical care in the world, there are major problems that we must face, especially in terms of reining in costs and allowing care to be affordable for all. However, as we have seen, current plans being pushed by the Democratic leadership represent change that may not be what we had in mind -- change which poses serious ethical concerns over the government having control over our families’ health care decisions. In addition, the current plans greatly increase costs of health care, while doing lip service toward controlling costs.
We need to address a REAL bipartisan reform proposition that will have REAL impacts on costs, and quality of patient care.
As Governor of Alaska, I learned a little bit about being a target for frivolous suits and complaints (Please, do I really need to footnote that?). I went my whole life without needing a lawyer on speed-dial, but all that changes when you become a target for opportunists and people with no scruples. Our nation’s health care providers have been the targets of similar opportunists for years, and they too have found themselves subjected to false, frivolous, and baseless claims. To quote a former president, “I feel your pain.”
So what can we do? First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. The two are intertwined. For example, one supposed justification for socialized medicine is the high cost of health care. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, “If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he'll need to reform the economic structures in medicine—especially programs like Medicare.” [1] Two examples of these “economic structures” are high malpractice insurance premiums foisted on physicians (and ultimately passed on to consumers as “high health care costs”) and the billions wasted on defensive medicine.
Dr. Stuart Weinstein, with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, recently explained the problem:
”The medical liability crisis has had many unintended consequences, most notably a decrease in access to care in a growing number of states and an increase in healthcare costs. Access is affected as physicians move their practices to states with lower liability rates and change their practice patterns to reduce or eliminate high-risk services. When one considers that half of all neurosurgeons—as well as one third of all orthopedic surgeons, one third of all emergency physicians, and one third of all trauma surgeons—are sued each year, is it any wonder that 70 percent of emergency departments are at risk because they lack available on-call specialist coverage?” [2]
Dr. Weinstein makes good points, points completely ignored by President Obama. Dr. Weinstein details the costs that our out-of-control tort system are causing the health care industry and notes research that “found that liability reforms could reduce defensive medicine practices, leading to a 5 percent to 9 percent reduction in medical expenditures without any effect on mortality or medical complications.” Dr. Weinstein writes:
“If the Kessler and McClellan estimates were applied to total U.S. healthcare spending in 2005, the defensive medicine costs would total between $100 billion and $178 billion per year. Add to this the cost of defending malpractice cases, paying compensation, and covering additional administrative costs (a total of $29.4 billion). Thus, the average American family pays an additional $1,700 to $2,000 per year in healthcare costs simply to cover the costs of defensive medicine. Excessive litigation and waste in the nation’s current tort system imposes an estimated yearly tort tax of $9,827 for a family of four and increases healthcare spending in the United States by $124 billion. How does this translate to individuals? The average obstetrician-gynecologist (OB-GYN) delivers 100 babies per year. If that OB-GYN must pay a medical liability premium of $200,000 each year (which is the rate in Florida), $2,000 of the delivery cost for each baby goes to pay the cost of the medical liability premium.” [3]
You would think that any effort to reform our health care system would include tort reform, especially if the stated purpose for Obama’s plan to nationalize our health care industry is the current high costs.
So I have new questions for the president: Why no legal reform? Why continue to encourage defensive medicine that wastes billions of dollars and does nothing for the patients? Do you want healthcare reform to benefit trial attorneys or patients?
Many states, including my own state of Alaska, have enacted caps on lawsuit awards against health care providers. Texas enacted caps and found that one county’s medical malpractice claims dropped 41 percent, and another study found a “55 percent decline” after reform measures were passed. [4] That’s one step in health care reform. Limiting lawyer contingency fees, as is done under the Federal Tort Claims Act, is another step. The State of Alaska pioneered the “loser pays” rule in the United States, which deters frivolous civil law suits by making the loser partially pay the winner’s legal bills. Preventing quack doctors from giving “expert” testimony in court against real doctors is another reform. Texas Gov. Rick Perry noted that, after his state enacted tort reform measures, the number of doctors applying to practice medicine in Texas “skyrocketed by 57 percent” and that the tort reforms “brought critical specialties to underserved areas.” These are real reforms that actually improve access to health care. [5]
Dr. Weinstein’s research shows that around $200 billion per year could be saved with legal reform. That’s real savings. That’s money that could be used to build roads, schools, or hospitals. If you want to save health care, let’s listen to our doctors too. There should be no health care reform without legal reform. There can be no true health care reform without legal reform.
- Sarah Palin
I mean, come across with the savings.
I don't dislike her. What I do dislike is a bunch of mindless "conservatives" who tout her as the next Reagan, despite her lack of qualifications.
She is just not ready yet; and to pretend that she is ready, is not only a disservice to her, but also to conservatism as a whole.
Yeah, right.
As I noted before, the truth is probably that Sarah Palin didn't give much thought to that line at all, aside from trying to play an emotional card.
The fact that she can say such things apparently without thinking about what they really mean, is evidence of her unreadiness for the big time.
She needs work, and that takes time.
Hmmmm.....from what is supposed to be the dummy? I guess next they will start saying she has a ghost writer for her facebook page.
If as is often said, physicians on the average carry $200,000 in malpractice insurance, there should be some room for savings with real tort reform and limits on awards, or even removing these cases from the jury system.
I don’t know of a more credible accounting firm than Price Waterhouse.
Do you?
Are you jealous of her success? You certainly appear very defensive and bitter on the whole topic.
No one has discussed this issue in the way that Palin has thusfar in this ObamaCare debate.
Palin is the only one, since about April or May, who has discussed tort reform.
She’s on the ball on the issue, while many of the mainstream Republican heads have no balls on the issue (see Mitt Romney).
“As I noted before, the truth is probably that Sarah Palin didn’t give much thought to that line at all, aside from trying to play an emotional card.
The fact that she can say such things apparently without thinking about what they really mean, is evidence of her unreadiness for the big time.”
She provided citations for each of her statements. Short of binding her essays in hardcover and autographing them, I am not sure what you need to satisfy you. Let’s face the facts, you allow the state run media to shape your thoughts and feelings about political figures.
Palin is offering a real suggestion of reform in the health care bill. Others have offered it before, she brings more attention to the issue.
There is a saying that there are no new ideas, only new ways to remarket old ideas. Your expectation that any candidate is going to have 80 new ideas that have never been heard of before is unreasonable.
Of course unreasonable is a theme that resounds thru many of your postings.
Not true. Jim DeMint, for example, has been very active on the subject of tort reform -- in the context of health care reform, even -- to the point of actually proposing an alternative reform plan. All of which puts him well ahead of Palin on the topic.
Meh.... I guess you'd rather wallow in emotionalism than rational discussion. That's your right, but I'm not going to play along anymore.
Well up to this point the issue unfortunately hasn't had good enough traction to get it done. .
"That's false. Ms. Palin herself cited several instances where it did have enough traction to be enacted into law ... without her help."
I've been reading through this thread - oh, give me a break!
We are talking about whether or not tort reform has been a significant part of the current debate on a national level. It has NOT. The libs have not addressed it at all, except by not addressing it, as clearly shown by other posters, above. Conservative leaders have so far failed to even cause a ripple.
Palin's piece is not perfect, true. But Ronald Reagan himself, I am sure, could and probably did on many an occaision go back and critique a lot of his own writings, later. So, I am not so concerned that Palin's piece does not read like it has been written by someone who has been penning "deep" policy articles for decades. What she has done is write an article that gets a specific part of the health care debate out in front of more people, and shown more people who otherwise would hear only the MSM / libs that conservatives DO have some ideas on improving the system. She has done this with an argument / words an average person can understand, and pointed out some specific examples of those ideas having a positive effect (something the Dems cannot do, I would add!)
It's just a little ripple, true. It's not even perfectly concentric. But, at least it's a ripple, and she's willing and able to make it.
I'll take it.
Hey, r9, a question or two, just for my own curiosity.
Consider it to have nothing to do with the thread:
1) Do you believe that people are “basically good”?
2) Do you believe that some people are so much more moral and intelligent that they should be making the decisions for those who are less intelligent?
Just doing some research, not picking a fight.
Messrs. DeMint and Corker would probably take exception to that comment. As would the pundits who have been saying unkind things about their efforts to advance the topic.
To his credit, DeMint certainly has done good work on this. But, except to some of US, it’s virtually “invisible”, and has no chance of going anywhere. Maybe if DeMint and Palin were to coordinate their efforts...
That’s funny. I have seen no publication from DeMint on this, specifically, in the context of ObamaCare.
You’re reaching farther back than you’re allowed.
You’re gonna have to face it, that Palin is doing something that is much more effective and much more impacting than what others have only dreamed of doing.
You don’t like Palin, and I understand that. But don’t let your dislike of Palin consume you.
Perfect timing on her part and succinct. Nice!
Aside from our all being fallen, I think that most people generally want to do the right thing most of the time, even if they tend to fail now and again. We're not so much "basically good," as we have a "basically good will."
2) Do you believe that some people are so much more moral and intelligent that they should be making the decisions for those who are less intelligent?
That's too broad a question to answer definitively. In some cases -- military strategy, for example -- some people may in fact be more capable and better informed, and as such are in a better position to make decisions for others. In many cases, individuals of whatever intelligence level are far-better placed to make their own decisions on a variety of matters -- economic choices being a particularly significant example. And sometimes there's a middle ground, which falls in the broad category of "regulation," where individual choices have to be balanced against the needs of society at large; pollution regulations are a pretty good example of that.
Just doing some research, not picking a fight.
Well, now, you'll pardon my suspicion that your "research" is about getting ready to pick a fight based on your presumption that I must be an elitist liberal or something.
Sorry, I'm not.
Messrs. DeMint and Corker would probably take exception to that comment. As would the pundits who have been saying unkind things about their efforts to advance the topic.
Actually, I think DeMint, Corker, and others, in an unguarded moment, would likely express deep frustration on the subject of "trying to advance the topic." Let me reword something I said:
As far as the public in general goes, except to some of US, DeMint, et al's, work on this, and their general approach, has been virtually “invisible” on a national level, and has no chance of going anywhere. Maybe if DeMint and Palin were to coordinate their efforts...
“Messrs. DeMint and Corker would probably take exception to that comment. As would the pundits who have been saying unkind things about their efforts to advance the topic.”
Good to see that you dropped your Romney citation out of this statement. Also, I am sure that Messrs. DeMint and Corker, being committed to a better nation, by whatever means, are happy that Gov Palin has draw attention to the issue. You accuse others of giving emotional responses, but yours seem to be the ones based on some irrational dislike for Governor Palin or the idea that she doesn’t meet your lofty and as yet unstated criteria for a conservative leader. r9, your fellow conservatives love you and want to help you work thru the issues, but you have to actually let us know what perspective you are coming from.
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