Palin PING!
Anyone on or off the Palin ping, write me.
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 believe insurance companies, doctors, bureaucrats and lawyers have all been responsible for sinister and reckless behavior that have caused death and disability. Crap happens. If it was done maliciously and it can be proved. I would support some additional payment to the claimants.
I would rather that a private sector rating organization be used to determine service levels of insurance companies, death rates and failure rates for doctors, infection rates for hospitals. All of this done so that consumers can make informed choices when making health care decisions.
How do you feel about single payer legal services for Americans? Shouldn’t this be a right like health care? (I have to ask every lawyer this. It’s my mission this year.)
I do get your point. But there are PLENTY of Republicans who sound intellectual. Most of them are hanging whole wet BEDSHEETS in the wind to make SURE the wind is blowing in a certain direction before they clear their intellectual throats and speak.
Sarah knows when the iron is hot and she is not afraid to actually FIGHT. The Democrats FIGHT while Republicans CRY, COWER, and WINCE. We need someone out there clarifying what we conservatives stand for, unabashed.
‘Not by 2012, she won’t. She needs a good 10 years.’
Perhaps, but that’s only because she’s a Republican. Democrats have already proven that they can win big with someone with much less experience than Sarah Palin.
That’s not fair. Sean is a committed conservative. He does a lot for our side. I will not see him bashed. I think sometimes he tries too hard to be nice to people, and I think he has to be too thinly spread time-wise, but he is definitely on our side, and a bulldog at that.
He’s no Rush Limbaugh but neither is anyone else.
Palin PING!
Anyone on or off the Palin ping, write me.
And you're happy about that? Using Obama's lack of experience as a gauge of Palin's marginally greater experience is to damn her with faint praise.
That's your opinion.
I think she could probably build a campaign organization over the next couple of years and she would be in fine shape.
She certainly knows more than the current occupant of the White House right now. You would disagree?
There won't be an America left in 10 years.
Have fun supporting a statist who believes that advancing conservatism is to first offer the enemy tea and crumpets.
Quite obviously you need 100 years of practice and effort to make a comment sounding somewhat reasonable.
‘And you’re happy about that?’
I’m happy that Sarah Palin is a much (not marginally, but much) more experienced and capable public servant than B.H.O.
I don't think so. She'd be savaged by the media, and she has to overcome the "Dan Quayle" image foisted upon her (with a bit of help from Sarah Palin herself) during the last election. And her resignation is a real boon to her opponents, too. If you ask outside of the Amen corner, you'll discover that a lot of folks just don't take her seriously. She needs to spend a lot of time and effort to change that perception -- she can't do it in a year, which is when she would have to get serious about campaigning.
She certainly knows more than the current occupant of the White House right now. You would disagree?
My dog knows more than the current occupant of the White House, but I'm not suggesting that qualifies him for the presidency.
Since Sarah Palin is the only Republican leader who is putting any dents in the un-constitutional, communist, NAZI, health care proposals, perhaps you could just lay off the criticism during the heat of the battle.
If there are any other potential Republican leaders offering solutions besides compromise or total capitulation, I haven't heard from them. This is no time to be singing the dubious praises of RINO cowardice.
yawwwnnnn.....
Says who?
YOU?
Will you excuse me while I laugh?
I recall, better men than you, the grandees of the British Conservative party, saying exactly the same thing about Margaret Thatcher, just before she became Prime Minister. She went on to become their greatest Prime Minister of contemporary times. Sarah Palin has had more executive experience than Thatcher had, when she became Prime Minister of Britain, and had infinitely more executive experience than 0bama has ever had when he took power. Period.
Why not?
Key thing here, is that Zero's election has thrown traditional prerequisites one must have for POTUS out the window.
If a radical leftist who was actually in the Senate for 140 days can become President, then so too can a housewife who has an abbreviated term as Governor.
You: The Bob Michels of the GOP
Sarah Palin: Lee Atwater
A lot of companies are providing legal insurance for employers. They will cover so many hours on certain things, etc.
I don’t believe it is a right. Neither technically is health care. I say this as a diabetic, and who would otherwise be unable to afford medicine. Theoretically a prospective employee has the ability to negotiate for this and other benefits as part of a compensation package. It doesn’t really work like that for most people in the real world, but for me that legal fiction is preferable than to claim it is a right. I would support incentives to employers who choose to do so, however.
I think that with the current legal insurance that is out there, that it may actually increase some litigation (people can afford lawyers easier, so they litigate things they might otherwise let go). Also, I believe that for such plans there is fraud (inflating hours on bills, because one knows the insurance company will negotiate to pay only a fraction of this—incidentally, the same thing that happened with health insurance).
To have it move to a single-payer legal insurance plan would carry many advantages and many disadvantages. I won’t weigh them all. But one big advantage is that payment will probably be more assured than it is with a client who has no legal insurance. A big disadvantage is that a single-payer can dictate price and payment more effectively. So to sum it up, it’s easier to get paid, but you’re getting paid less.
To be sure there are other problems. At first blush I would be against the plan—the same as I am with health care. That’s not to say that there doesn’t need to be changes.
In any event, I like your idea for private sector rating organization—there probably are such things already. The big problem is one I touched on earlier—by and large, the meaningful decisions as to health care are made by one’s employer, so for most Americans control over health care decisions is only indirect. That is, unless one can afford to pay the whole premium oneself, and without employer contributions.
Yup.
That argument could be an indication that you may be posting on the wrong board here. The guys that think like you are right here:
http://www.dailykos.com/
It's alright to rejoin your close pals you know.
This 10 year theme is familiar. The last time I heard it was when they had the Al Gore 10 year countdown to world destruction.
I mean heck, if people (according to Algore) can destroy the world in 10 years, Sarah Palin ought to be ready to run for President in 2 or 3 wouldn’t you think?
So let’s hear your suggestion of who we need right now.
I don't think so. She'd be savaged by the media, and she has to overcome the "Dan Quayle" image foisted upon her (with a bit of help from Sarah Palin herself) during the last election
The media will savage all Republicans who are a threat. You have to stop living your life in fear of the liberal media. Besides, given the growth of the internet, FOX News and talk radio we me may actually be at a tipping point in our favor.
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She certainly knows more than the current occupant of the White House right now. You would disagree?
My dog knows more than the current occupant of the White House, but I'm not suggesting that qualifies him for the presidency.
Does your dog believe in the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution? Has your dog given speeches in front of millions of people. Will your dog over the next 18 months be offering common sense popular conservative positions on the issues of the day that would confront a U.S. President?
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