Posted on 11/21/2007 1:29:05 PM PST by Jim Robinson
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Tuesday for capping medical malpractice lawsuits, a point that drew loud applause at an Iowa medical school.
Romney focused on health care in an address to some 500 students and faculty at Des Moines University. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney pushed through a plan aimed at reducing the ranks of uninsured in Massachusetts, a group once estimated at up to 500,000. Massachusetts residents had until last Thursday to sign up for health insurance or face possible penalties — a milestone Romney's rivals gleefully noted.
"I believe we have to enact federal caps on non-economic and punitive damages related to malpractice," Romney said. "These lottery-sized awards and frivolous lawsuits may enrich the trial lawyers but they put a heavy burden on doctors, hospitals and, of course through defensive medicine, they put a burden on the entire health care system."
Romney also would encourage states to create health courts with judges experienced in handling medical liability cases and would ask states to adopt sanctions against lawyers and others who repeatedly file frivolous malpractice claims.
"We've got to reign in the incessant cost of medical liability," he said.
~snip~
At one point, Romney joked about the "teeth" of failing to sign up in Massachusetts.
"If you don't have insurance you get charged $100 on your tax bill," he said. "So people are going to start buying insurance."
~snip~
Later, Romney told reporters the carrot-and-stick approach is necessary to get people to take responsibility for their own health care costs
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.google.com ...
Collision covers my car. Liability requires payments to others.
However, it is not the government that requires you have collision. It is the bank that gave you the loan. After the loan’s paid off, you do not have to cover collision. (In many cases, the value of the car by the time the loan’s paid off makes it unwise economically to do so.)
Now, I agree with you about charity. But, if you read the sign on the hospital wall as you enter, you realize that the law requires them to treat anyone who enters whether they have the resources to pay or not.
Any system, however, that forces the individual to pay for themselves is not socialism.
I know lots of people who get an earned income credit of 1 to 3 thousand bucks at the end of the year BECAUSE they had low income. Is that socialism to enhance the incomes of low income people by taking money from me to give to them?
Yep. It is.
Now someone wants to come along and take that money away from them and force them to buy health insurance with it. They want that individual to be responsibile for his/her family’s health care costs. In and of itself, that is not a socialistic plan. It is individual responsibility for individual health care.
On the other hand, the money comes from their tax refund or tax deduction. It increases their bill or it deducts from their refund (however you wish to view it.)
The SOURCE of that money is a socialistic grabbing of my wealth, but that’s this current TAX CODE. It is NOT the health plan itself.
Exactly. And how you treat your body should not put a liability on others.
Granted that the socialists who have been in charge of our cultural/schools/media for the last three generations want you to think that --and they are trying to further entrench that into our laws-- but accepting that is not fighting it.
That's exactly what I've been arguing.
I personally don't mind some guy sits at home and doctors himself with Vicks VapoRub and Bayer Aspirin.
But, they don't do that. They go to the hospital and you and I have to pay for it.
THAT is what has to stop. THAT is socialism...to force me to pay for this guy's health care.
Forcing HIM to pay for his health care is NOT socialism.
And do you really think that leeches of society are going to pay?
The Romney plan, I believe, will advance socialism, not roll it back.
And it will make health care worse. It will be to health care as Social Security is to retirement plans.
No I’m not. I said that if they can prove the ability to pay, then that’s fine. I also said they can use the insurance company of their choice.
Any plan that is a USER PAY system is fine with me. That means the individual covers his own bills. Not me.
Is that what the law says? Does it provide for self-insurance?
And as I understand it, you would be required to choose from a list of approved insurance companies.
I’m not from Massachusetts. I don’t know what their law says.
I’ve been arguing in favor of the idea that the user should pay....and if they do it by increasing his taxes or decreasing his deduction, then that’s fine with me, too.
Forced insurance is ok with me with both auto and health, so long as there’s choice in where you get it. If the state enters into an arrangement with The Harford, say, to provide certain coverage at a certain amount, and that’s where everyone gets channeled, I have no problem with that channeling so long as anyone willing to match or better that coverage and that cost can get some of those customers, too.
AND, anyone who has the financial resources to prove self-coverage should also be exempt.
BUT, the principle I espouse is SELF-PAY and individual responsibility for one’s own debts.
I have no problem with that. My big concern is adding government to areas where none had been under the guise of reform --the old trick of the Fabian Socialists.
I fear very much that a plan such as Romney's plays into their hands.
I strongly suspect the Mass. law provides for no exemptions -- I don't see how it could. Further, I suspect the acceptible insurance plans are highly regulated, as to what is and is not covered.
And of even greater concern would be future governments adding requirements for coverage for abortions, sex change operations etc.
I think you could bet the farm on that happening in fact.
Trib, you seem like a truly honorable person. I would not argue with you about concerns over rampant government. In fact, I would think your inclination to keep a close eye on them is right on the money. I don’t trust them either.
My personal favorite is a plan that calls for catastrophic (or major) medical insurance and a medical savings account.
The savings account covers routine doctor visits and any deductible payments associated with the catatrophic medical insurance.
If good health and good fortune causes that account not to get used and for it to get TOO rich, then I’d allow some to be transferred to a retirement account penalty free.
That assumes this silly income tax system that we currently have in place. And I assume it will be in place for the remainder of my lifetime, although I’d prefer some kind of “pay as you go” tax system.
Dittos back.
And you have some very good ideas.
Thank you.
Let’s pray for a conservative to win the nomination: preferably Hunter, but I’ll be just fine with Thompson.
I’ll go along with that :-)
Besides, a $147 million shortfall in a state with a budget close to $30 billion is chump change.
[That’s just a projection. It’s not overbudget yet.
Besides, a $147 million shortfall in a state with a budget close to $30 billion is chump change.]
It was based on an insurance budget of ~$620 million, about a 25% overrun, and I guarantee it will be worse.
We'll see whether it pans out. It hasn't happened yet. It's just a forecast. That number also doesn't include cost savings from fewer uninsured people skipping out of ER's without paying.
But even if at the end of the day the cost overrun is that bad or worse, compared to the total state budget, it's still pretty low.
“That number also doesn’t include cost savings from fewer uninsured people skipping out of ER’s without paying.”
And it doesn’t count the number of people who will lose jobs and therefore end up in poor health because businesses left the state. But socialism is never obvious, just cancerous.
And so the government (the same guys that botched it up and ran up the costs anyway) jump in with a new socialist plan that forces everyone into their government controlled system... and the costs continue to spiral out of sight.
How about simply getting the government out and allowing free enterprise to compete?
Check this out:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929822/posts
It’s a good article. And I’ll always agree with You paying for Your health issues and Me paying for Mine and John Q Citizen paying for his.
I don’t want them in my pocket.
Individual responsibility is the opposite of socialism. We can argue all day long (and we have on another thread) about whether forcing Massachusetts citizens to have individual health insurance is socialism or not. I say that because each pays his own way that it is not. You say that because they get channeled to a certain insurance company that it is. One conservative foundation sides with me. Another sides with you.
But let’s agree on this principle.
Each man covers his own insurance and health care costs.
I like the Wal-Mart idea, but I’m willing to bet a month’s supply of coffee that the Fed will get their fingers in that pie and control it inside of a few years. They already shop in Wal-Mart with food coupons. They’ll be allowed to use those for their medical needs. Then we’ll have to increase their food stamp allotment.
Fed, fed, fed....world without end.
Read Johnstone & Johnstone’s “Remember the Alamo.”
WOSG: “No, his Federal proposal is to let states have the freedom/flexibility to use health-care allocated dollars more as they see fit.”
JR: “The states already have freedom: “
In this context, what we have are Federal laws, programs and mandates like Medicaid and S-CHIP that tell the States they get Federal funds if the follow Federal rules. That is the status quo and it isnt freedom. Government health care is being run on 1000s of pages of Medicaid
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/index.php/Medicaid
“Medicaid is a medical assitance program jointly financed by state and federal governments for low income individuals and is embodied in 42 U.S.C. §1396 et seq (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/42/ch7schXIX.html). It was first enacted in 1965 as an amendment to the Social Security Act of 1935. Today, Medicaid is a major social welfare program and is administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (http://www.cms.hhs.gov/), formerly known as the Health Care Financing Administration.”
That’s not freedom for the States. It’s a system that locks all 50 states into the same system. S-CHIP is a bit looser, but has similar characteristics.
What if instead of running health care bureaucracies out of Washington, the states were block-granted the money and allowed to craft more suitable programs for their states?
“What are health care dollars and how would Romney or the federal government get control over them if there were such a thing?”
See Above. Health care dollars are the hundreds of billions of Federal Government spending, plus addition billions of state funding, that goes to govt-funded health care. Those dollars are under control of Congress. No matter who becomes President, even Ron Paul, that channel of money won’t be going away. Romney is talking about how to get the most for the least out of this set of funds.
Medicare is unconstitutional and should be abolished.
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