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 ...
Ronald Reagan was in bed with scumbag trial lawyers like John Edwards? That’s news to me.
The ideal thing would be to get the companies out of the loop paying for insurance. Maybe that will happen sometime in the future, but who knows. I know, you read stories in the news that companies won’t hire smokers. Next will be something else, possibly.
Yeah, I know. And the government could fix a lot of our social ills if we’d only allow them to ignore the constitution. Ask the liberals.
Just think of what we could save if the government would simply cap the prices of goods and services we (or they) deem necessary.
Woo hoo!! Free lunch for all!!
I do carry it. That’s why they paid for the accident.
However, what gives that guy the right to skate out of damages that he caused? I would be in favor of jailing him, but that isn’t going to get the money back either.
Note how Romney has stepped forward and offered a Republican response to what is likely to become (given Iraq victory) the ultimate issue in the 2008 Presidential campaign. It is a plan that goes on offense, rather than just plays defense against Democrat proposals.
The reason you can’t play only defense and say repeated NO to the Dem proposal is because of something conservatives with employer plans cannot understand — namely The Status Quo Loses. The voters will not accept continued 15%/yr increases in premiums and pre-existing condition exclusion.
That is the status quo and it loses. If you lose you are irrelevant.
Playing offense on this issue is critically important.
Free lunch is right. I’m tired of hearing a lot of people complain about having to pay for healthcare. They even gripe when they have to pay a copay for a doctor’s visit or medication. I used to work for CIGNA and some employees were expecting everything paid 100%.
Frivolous lawsuits as used not just by ACLU but also patients claiming to be victims have become merely legalized extortion.
They didn’t get along. People got stuck when someone injured them and couldn’t pay.
The injured person ends up paying twice. He sustains injury, and he gets to watch someone walk away from their obligations.
Really, it isn’t a matter of whether it does or doesn’t work for us. It’s a matter of property ownership.
You are saying that anyone can injure my property and that’s my tough luck. And here I was thinking I owned it.
So as a 'conservative' you see no issue with the government requiring you to spend your money on something that you may or may not need?
I don't go to the doctor. Ever. I finally broke down from needling from my friends and went for a physical. It had been about 9-10 years since my last. Lo and behold the doctor said I was in excellent health. Hit all the marks and in most cases (cholesterol, BP, heart rate) below the average. But you would require me to spend money every year for 10 years on a service I don't use. To overpay a doctor that would have to charge considerably less if left to the free market. Thanks but no thanks. I believe in personal responsibility which is why I ate right, exercised, etc. without a doctor sticking and poking me every other year.
The government takes enough money from me on the front end in taxation to pay for the ever increasing bureaucracy and international empire. I don't need them requiring me to spend the rest of my money on something I will not use. Now as the time comes I get older and I feel a pang or two, I'll sign up for insurance. And pay a higher rate because of my age. But that's my business. Not yours and definitely not the Suit's business
And people wonder why conservatives and libertarians don't want to bother voting for a party that threatens their wallets just as much as the Democrats...
Wait until EVERYONE is able to receive ALL the FREE or subsidized medical services they want. You ain’t seen nothing yet. The costs of medical products and services are going to soar with the demand.
Woo hoo!! Boom time for the health insurance and services rackets!!
Just what I want...2 wrecked cars. And the one you want to give me doesn’t have any insurance.
“Or what it is worth...” And just who is going to pay that to me? The indigent jerk??
Forcing someone to restore my property is not nanny-statism.
Property rights are actually part of the basic rights: Life, Liberty, and right to own property.
Just wait until it’s all FREE. Costs are going to plunge. LOL!!!
Debtor’s prison:
The problem with debtor’s prison is that they put people with no money in them and expect them somehow to come up with money.
Maybe they put them to work building widgets, but why should a private widget manufacturer have to compete with the government making widgets?
No good answer.
But forcing them to have insurance in order to tag a car is a good start.
I’m not interested in Mitt’s health company. I’m interested in your having the funds to care for yourself, a signed statement to just let you die if you get sick, or some insurance policy.
An opt-out would be ideal, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
You guys do realize that when you say things like:
You’re going to FORCE me to pay these lowlifes to have insurance? Why do I have to pay for them?
. . . you are denying that you already do?
When an illegal waltzes into a hospital and gets free treatment for some emergency matter, and doesn’t pay, to whom do you think the hospital passes along the cost? When they do, what do you think happens to your insurance premiums?
When you come to that place on your 1040 where it says the US government will subsidize your health care up to about 30% (that’s what a tax deduction is — a subsidy) for all amounts over 7% AGI, why don’t you complain? Why don’t you point at that and demand that Congress eliminate that tax deduction? Why? Because we don’t look deeply enough. We think a tax deduction is something special when mathematically it looks no different from a 30% subsidy.
So Romney proposes a requirement that is Not a single payer system, is Not a nationalizing of the health insurance industry and is No more a requirement for the taxpayer to fund it than the taxpayer already does, and folks decide that this is bad.
The only sophisticated health care proposal from any GOP candidate at all that is so far to the right of a government administered single payer system that Hillary cringed at the thought — and folks here want to declare it to be somehow different from the socialized approach that already exists in the status quo.
You guys had better get recalibrated on this. If you lose you are irrelevant. The irrelevant get to live in Hillary’s surrender first world where you will pay more in taxes and watch those tax dollars fund MoveOn as a non faith based charity.
I do not want any federal requirement for health insurance. President Bush and other conservatives have proposed very sensible health care reforms that emphasize competition, choice, litigation limits, and personal responsibility. Federal mandates for insurance will drive the cost of health care substantially higher. Many if not most states will impose mandates that will drive the cost much higher.
Your concern about unreimbursed health care costs is legitimate. Here is my idea for partially dealing with unreimbursed costs. Treat unreimbursed health care costs like student loan defaults. Hospitals could recover some costs through claims on tax refunds. This solution would need some refinement to provide opportunity for taxpayers to settle and dispute their charges. This approach would catch costs from illegals as many illegals claim the EITC and other tax credits.
Some people need to be whipped into shape. The difference between a libertarian and a conservative is that the latter recognizes this fact.
Libertarians ignore the fact that people who are irresponsible in their personal affairs impose costs on the rest of us. Conservatives, however, recognize it, and hence they realize that sometimes it is necessary to punish personal irresponsibility.
Hence the need for laws against narcotics. Hence the need to mandate liability auto insurance. Hence the need for truancy laws. etc, etc, etc.
Mandating that poeple buy some minimum amount of personal PRIVATE health insurance is no different than any of the above.
And no, it's not socialist. If we were forcing people to buy it from the government, it would be socialist. But that's not what Romney did in Massachusetts. He's mandating people buy PRIVATE insurance.
This is no less socialist than mandates to buy private auto insurance.
It's exactly the same deal in MA with the health insurance. There is a minimum coverage requirement. Any company that meets it can offer coverage in the state that will satisfy the individual mandate.
Government control over the distribution of goods and services is definitely socialistic. It sure as hell is not freedom.
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