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
r9etb refuses to acknowledge why DeMint's Waterloo comment garnered much more press and put the WH on the defensive than his alternative health-care proposals.
The days of responding to Democrats with bland press releases and pleas for pledges of support are over. That is why Palin is beloved by the grassroots, and that is why r9etb arguments against Palin based upon perceived, predetermined "qualifications" (according to whom?) isn't going to persuade anyone. With her "death panel" comments, she has taken a page from the libs and galvanized the town hallers. Subsequent postings have put the Dems on the run. Now her tort reform argument is going to provide even more spotlight to Obamacare and further weaken it.
After watching her career and family get destroyed by leftists funded and directed by Obama, Palin is returning the favor. This woman, IMO, is a warrior.
We need to be clear on this point: although Ms. Palin apparently aspires to a leadership position, she is not actually in a leadership position.
To waste any more of my time trying to correct your misstatements, which are so frequent and flagrant as to suggest that you are being deliberately dishonest.
Buh bye.
Your mindless raging along with the other shills here proves that she has already done it. You wouldn't be here fighting with all you have if she were not a total danger to your ideology.
Chortle!
You can read I suppose?
E-X-E-C-U-T-I-V-E experience. Get it?
Being a British MP is even less executive experience than being a US Senator, which is what 0bama was when he took power. And 0bama had zero executive experience.
After all, there are over SIX HUNDRED British members of parliament(MP's). There's nothing particularly remarkable about being an MP.
The only thing that even came close to executive experience for Margaret Thatcher, was when she was Education Secretary for a few years. That is still not like running whole state or even a city before that like Saran Palin did.
I repeat, Sarah Palin has more executive experience than Margaret Thatcher did when she became Prime Minister. That is FACT.
Equally the grandees of Conservative Party, considered Thatcher as “inexperienced” and not ‘ready to lead” the Conservative Party at the time she was elected leader of the Conservative Party .
As a matter of fact, it was her mentor the brilliant Keith Joseph who was supposed to take over the leadership of the Conservative Party, but events conspired against him, whereby he had to withdraw his name, and Thatcher ended up taking over the leadership of the party.
“She served as Leader of the Opposition from 1975 until she was selected as Prime Minister. “
Shows what you know.
You can't even be the leader of Her Majesty's opposition unless you are the leader of the second biggest party in parliament. When Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party, her sole executive experience if you can call it that), was when she served as Secretary of Education. In Britain they don't vote for the Prime Minster directly. The leader of the party, that has most seats in parliament, becomes the Prime Minister, after a visit with the Queen of course.
I'd put service as Governor of the biggest state in America, much higher than being Secretary of Education in Britain any day.
As Secretary of Education, you take your orders from the Prime Minister, and can be sacked by the Prime Minister at his whim. You are not your own boss.
As Governor, you are the boss. No one can sack you, unless you decide to resign yourself.
The most intellectually dishonest poster on this thread, turns round and accuses others of doing what he himself is doing.
Classic!
You guys are ridiculous. But I have to admit that I'm having a great time collecting your invective.
My sense of humor is quite intact thank you, after all I responded to your post...
Yup.
Payback is a B***H!
Zero is going to regret trying to ruin and destroy the life and family of this woman. This evil man is going to get what's coming to him
By which you mean, "If somebody bothers to argue with SmokingJoe's opinion, he must be lying."
OBTW ... your post on why Thatcher's long career in Parliament is less a qualification than Palin's half-term as governor... it's incredibly ignorant. About on par with the rest of your twaddle, though.
So long, pal.
“First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. “
She’s absolutely right about that. Secondly, we cannot have health care reform without enforcing our immigration laws....which she totally ignores...again.
By which I mean if someone is keeps twisting and contorting facts in a vain pathetic attempt to defend the indefensible, in nearly every post everyone in the thread, then he is being intellectually dishonest.
OBTW ... your post on why Thatcher's long career in Parliament is less a qualification than Palin’s half-term as governor... it's incredibly ignorant.”
Naaah.
You are ignorant. You don't know crap about British parliamentarians and what they usually do. I do.
It would be like saying Joe Biden had more executive experience than Sarah Palin. He didn't. He hadn't even run a village in his life, before he became VP.
It is a declarative fact. Sarah Palin is not in a leadership position, in the sense of being able to guide policy or platform; or being in a position to influence legislation. Nor is she in any position to affect the actual debate or process in Congress.
What she is doing, is talking ... not without effect, but it's still just talk: one opinion among many.
“Zero is going to regret trying to ruin and destroy the life and family of this woman. This evil man is going to get what’s coming to him”
Wait just one minute. I have the polling data here that show that conservatives should have nothing to do with Sarah Palin. These polls come directly from the Ministry of Approved Information. Thus, we can believe them.
Barack Obama 47% Mike Huckabee 44%
Barack Obama 47% Mitt Romney 40%
Barack Obama 49% Newt Gingrich 41%
Barack Obama 48% David Duke 37%
Barack Obama 55% Larry Craig 37%
Barack Obama 50% Mark Foley 35%
Barack Obama 75% Sarah Palin 25%
Conservatives should stay far away from Sarah Palin as it will spell doom. There is absolutely no what Sarah Palin can beat Barack Obama. The results would inevitably be death to the conservative cause. We have been warned sternly.
Regards,
Director-Ministry of Approved Informations
Wrong!
By the MSM's visible admission, she is the understood leader of American Conservatism at this time. Every false poll that they publish pits someone or a group of someones against Sarah Palin. Not one single poll has been published since the November election that has not included Sarah Palin.
If that isn't leadership, then there is no such thing as leadership. - She is the "Heir Apparent."
Uh huh. And yet you managed to make an utter hash of your dismissal Thatcher's qualifications, in a vain attempt to make Sarah Palin look good by comparison.
That's pathetic. Palin has nothing close to Thatcher's experience and you know it. But you apparently won't admit it. Why?
And thank God she has the good sense to do that!
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