"Pelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers
"Pelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers
"The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill):
Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.
So, you can’t try to seek alternatives to lawsuits if you’ve actually done something to implement alternatives to lawsuits. Brilliant! The trial lawyers must be very happy today!
While there is debate over the details, it is clear that medical malpractive lawsuits have some impact on driving health care costs higher. There are likely a number of procedures that are done simply as a defense against future possible litigation. Recall this from the Washington Post:
“Lawmakers could save as much as $54 billion over the next decade by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, congressional budget analysts said today — a substantial sum that could help cover the cost of President Obama’s overhaul of the nation’s health system. New research shows that legal reforms would not only lower malpractice insurance premiums for medical providers, but would also spur providers to save money by ordering fewer tests and procedures aimed primarily at defending their decisions in court, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, wrote in a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).”
Stay tuned. There are certainly many more terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad provisions in this massive bill."
http://biggovernment.com/2009/10/30/pelosi-health-care-bill-blows-a-kiss-to-trial-lawyers/#more-23042
4 Comments:
Malpractice suits, bloated research and development, regulation, fraud, profit...there are a lot of angles to lower health care costs. Nothing is broken in the system, it's strictly a matter of cost. These costs didn't exist 50 years ago so why do they exist today? The answer to that question is the root of the problem.
Now can we take the baby out of the bath tub so he doesn't get sucked down the drain?
What do you call a bus load of trial lawyers going over a 300 ft. cliff? A good start.
A trial lawyer lives for the type of crap noted above. THEY are the root cause that is driving people away from getting into the medical field due to insurance costs. You can't make people go into the health care business especially doctors and nurses, they do it because they truly love helping their fellow man. Every doctor and nurse that I know are passionate about doing their best for the patients within the means they have.
Next time you need a gall bladder removed have a lawyer do it, eventually it may come to that.
Thanks Rick! A lawyer would sue the drain manufacturer before he'd admit the legal profession shoving the baby down it.
Thanks Jarasan! How about a fleet of buses (figuratively of course)? The legal profession has been systematically dismantling this nation beginning with suits which awarded stupidity, moved on to malpractice, then suits designed to dismantle corporations, send them abroad .... all with approving nod and more stupid laws hatched by lawyers elected to congress.
No surprise these provisions remained. Hubby says lawyers write things to create work for each other.
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