Rein-in or exterminate?
We need to eliminate medical lawsuits altogether. We need a general fund to compensate victims of real malpractice for real damage, and a believable way to weed out those guilty of malpractice.
Uh...if that’s the case....Obomba FIRST!!!
As a general observation, litigation or the mere threat thereof, imposes huge costs on society. Virtually everything costs more because of it. The heath care arena would be an excellent place to start limiting excessive and frivolous litigation. A proof of concept if you will.
yeah, as if the ambulance-chasers running the Democrat party would ever go for that.
Most medical malpractice cases take place at the state level. Limits at the federal level would have little impact, unless you are also suggesting these limits be imposed upon the states as well.
Tennessee has joined several other states in trying to pass a Health Care Freedom Act. NO COLAs for granny, retired Military or retired fed employees. BIG NEW fees for Tricare for Life retired over 65 Military's secondary health ins. (DOD bill already passed, delayed but goes into effect 2011)
New Dem mantra: Woof, woof eat dog food granny....ala let them eat cake.
You do realize that punitive damages are where the trial lawyers make their money.
Ergo, eliminating punitive damages would immediately cut down on the ambulance chasers and malpractice lawsuits.
Let's do it.
meanwhile on the Democrat side, look for the trial lawyers and their minions to go absolutely ape doo-doo over John Murtha being allegedly a victim of medical malpractice.
We have had TORT reform (MICRA) in California since 1976.
We have the highest healthcare costs in all of the states. Except maybe Mass who has universal coverage and their costs since have gone up 42%.
Attorney’s do not take malpractice cases here unless there is a death or brain damage for the most part. MICRA is called a license to kill by many harmed by negligence or ignorance. One attorney in SF, his dad (a attorney who founded the practice)was killed through physician negligence. He knew not to fight it because the court would say he was old anyway.
Someone can accidentally slip on your property and make out a like bandit in the courts. A doctor can be so negligent they don’t read records and destroy a persons life and there is nothing you can do about it in California.
The other side of the coin is in one state with no tort reform, you can have microscopic surgery (gastric bypass)and sue for two small scars and get 9 million. Utterly ridiculous.
Our costs will be lowered when people are forced to pay for uncompensated care. Our illegal’s cost us probably a billion a year alone in California. And they walk away owing not one penny.
People don’t want to pay for health insurance, that’s fine too. But be willing to lose everything if you get a catastrophic illness. Personal responsibility. Why is the responsible the only ones who pay up in Obama’s policies?!?!
We also need to make it possible to shop across state lines for insurance to be competitive. Pay for what you want in your plan. If you are a nutcase (most progressives) You will want mental healthcare. If you are John Edwards you will want marriage counseling added.
We can make available catastrophic coverage for those who don’t want all expenses paid.
Health savings account that roll over each year are great for people in good health.
Malpractice is about 5% of the problem. You want reality, go to any ER, and ask how many have insurance coverage. Then ask how padded the bill of the patients who do have insurance will be because of the uninsured. 400% and up.
Any attempt to address healthcare costs should begin by extracting the parasites, and TORT REFORM would be the common-sense, obvious place to start ... yet no where in the thousands of ugly pages of Big Government healthcare reform drafts will you find a single reference to tort reform.