Romney: Cap Medical Malpractice Lawsuits [Romney vs Reagan]

Associated Press ^ | November 21, 2007 | By DAVID PITT

[Jim Robinson]

"Some people need to be whipped into shape."

So says Fidel.

[Calpernia]

Looks like Romney is on the Healthy People 2010 train just like Huckabee.

http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=pressreleases&agId=Eeohhs2&prModName=dphpressrelease&prFile=061024_obesity.xml as retrieved on Aug 15, 2007 18:53:58 GMT.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Executive Office of Health and Human Services
Department of Public Health
250 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02108-4619

MITT ROMNEY

GOVERNOR

KERRY HEALEY

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

TIMOTHY MURPHY

SECRETARY

PAUL J. COTE, JR.

COMMISSIONER

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

October 24, 2006

CONTACT:

Donna Rheaume
(617) 624-5006

ONE OUT OF FIVE MASSACHUSETTS ADULTS OBESE

DPH Releases Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Report

The Department of Public Health (DPH) today released the annual Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) report which tracks health risk factors, preventative health behaviors, chronic conditions and emerging public health issues. The report is based on a 2005 telephone survey of over 8,900 Massachusetts residents ages 18 and older. Residents were asked questions about a variety of health topics including smoking, binge drinking, weight and obesity, diabetes, flu immunization, cancer screening, asthma and others.

Highlights from the report include:

• Obesity continued to increase in Massachusetts. One out of five Massachusetts adults was obese (20.7 percent). Massachusetts remains the fifth leanest state in the U.S.
• The gap between Massachusetts and the U.S. numbers for binge drinking is decreasing. In 2005, nearly 16 percent of Massachusetts adults reported binge drinking (5 or more drinks on one occasion) in the past month compared with about 14 percent nationally.
• 6.4 percent of Massachusetts adults have diabetes, which is 14 percent lower than the U.S. Diabetes has been increasing at a rate of 3 percent per year in Massachusetts since 1990. Obese adults are more likely to report diabetes than adults with normal weight.
• 87 percent of Massachusetts adults reported that they have a health care provider in 2005, surpassing the Healthy People 2010 goal of 85 percent.

“The Massachusetts BRFSS continues to be one of the key public health surveillance tools which helps us target resources to meet the needs of residents and improve the health of our citizens,” said DPH Commissioner Paul J. Cote Jr.

According to the Massachusetts BRFSS, adult smoking rates have fallen in the past two decades from 28 percent in 1986 to the current rate of 18 percent, placing Massachusetts below the national average of 21 percent. There has also been a decline in Massachusetts residents’ exposure to secondhand smoke. The statewide Smoke-Free Workplace Law was signed by Governor Romney in July 2004.

Other highlights on tobacco use include:

• In 2005, 18 percent of Massachusetts adults reported smoking, which represents about 850,000 current adult smokers in Massachusetts.
• Adults with less than four years of college reported significantly higher smoking rates.
• Smokers also tend to be concentrated in certain geographic areas of the Commonwealth, including Worcester, Springfield, Fall River/New Bedford, and rural areas of southeastern and western Massachusetts.

“This report demonstrates that we have made tremendous progress in lowering smoking rates in Massachusetts. It also allows us to target our efforts to those groups and communities where smoking rates remain high as we work to reduce the numbers of smokers,” said DPH Associate Commissioner Sally Fogerty.

For more information,visit www.mass.gov/dph/hsp and www.mass.gov/dph/mtcp. BRFSS Data through 2005 can also be found on www.masschip.state.ma.us.

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More on Healthy People 2010:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1563271/posts
Healthy People 2010

BTW, to anyone supporting Romney, if he is behind Healthy People, this means NO GUNS. Healthy People 2010 declares guns "unhealthy".

See post 108 for the Occupational Safety and Health section of Healthy People 2010

Looks like Romney is on the Healthy People 2010 train just like Huckabee.

http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=pressreleases&agId=Eeohhs2&prModName=dphpressrelease&prFile=061024_obesity.xml as retrieved on Aug 15, 2007 18:53:58 GMT.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Executive Office of Health and Human Services
Department of Public Health
250 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02108-4619

MITT ROMNEY

GOVERNOR

KERRY HEALEY

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

TIMOTHY MURPHY

SECRETARY

PAUL J. COTE, JR.

COMMISSIONER

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

October 24, 2006

CONTACT:

Donna Rheaume
(617) 624-5006

ONE OUT OF FIVE MASSACHUSETTS ADULTS OBESE

DPH Releases Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Report

The Department of Public Health (DPH) today released the annual Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) report which tracks health risk factors, preventative health behaviors, chronic conditions and emerging public health issues. The report is based on a 2005 telephone survey of over 8,900 Massachusetts residents ages 18 and older. Residents were asked questions about a variety of health topics including smoking, binge drinking, weight and obesity, diabetes, flu immunization, cancer screening, asthma and others.

Highlights from the report include:

• Obesity continued to increase in Massachusetts. One out of five Massachusetts adults was obese (20.7 percent). Massachusetts remains the fifth leanest state in the U.S.
• The gap between Massachusetts and the U.S. numbers for binge drinking is decreasing. In 2005, nearly 16 percent of Massachusetts adults reported binge drinking (5 or more drinks on one occasion) in the past month compared with about 14 percent nationally.
• 6.4 percent of Massachusetts adults have diabetes, which is 14 percent lower than the U.S. Diabetes has been increasing at a rate of 3 percent per year in Massachusetts since 1990. Obese adults are more likely to report diabetes than adults with normal weight.
• 87 percent of Massachusetts adults reported that they have a health care provider in 2005, surpassing the Healthy People 2010 goal of 85 percent.

“The Massachusetts BRFSS continues to be one of the key public health surveillance tools which helps us target resources to meet the needs of residents and improve the health of our citizens,” said DPH Commissioner Paul J. Cote Jr.

According to the Massachusetts BRFSS, adult smoking rates have fallen in the past two decades from 28 percent in 1986 to the current rate of 18 percent, placing Massachusetts below the national average of 21 percent. There has also been a decline in Massachusetts residents’ exposure to secondhand smoke. The statewide Smoke-Free Workplace Law was signed by Governor Romney in July 2004.

Other highlights on tobacco use include:

• In 2005, 18 percent of Massachusetts adults reported smoking, which represents about 850,000 current adult smokers in Massachusetts.
• Adults with less than four years of college reported significantly higher smoking rates.
• Smokers also tend to be concentrated in certain geographic areas of the Commonwealth, including Worcester, Springfield, Fall River/New Bedford, and rural areas of southeastern and western Massachusetts.

“This report demonstrates that we have made tremendous progress in lowering smoking rates in Massachusetts. It also allows us to target our efforts to those groups and communities where smoking rates remain high as we work to reduce the numbers of smokers,” said DPH Associate Commissioner Sally Fogerty.

For more information,visit www.mass.gov/dph/hsp and www.mass.gov/dph/mtcp. BRFSS Data through 2005 can also be found on www.masschip.state.ma.us.

###

###

-----------------------------------------------------

More on Healthy People 2010:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1563271/posts
Healthy People 2010

BTW, to anyone supporting Romney, if he is behind Healthy People, this means NO GUNS. Healthy People 2010 declares guns "unhealthy".

See post 108 for the Occupational Safety and Health section of Healthy People 2010

[curiosity]

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?

Unless you're immortal, you need health insurance. There's always a positive probability that you will get seriously ill, get in an accident, etc. and need medical care to either save your life or restore its quality.

Just because you've been lucky so far and haven't needed it doesn't mean you won't in the future.

And the odds are that at some point in the future you will.

If you only buy health insurance when you think you will have to spend a lot on healthcare, it's no longer insurance.

I don't go to the doctor. Ever.

Odds are you at some point in your life will, and then the medical bills will be higher than what you can afford on your own. Of course, the ER won't be able to turn you away, in which case you will be able to declare bankruptcy and stick the taxpayers with the bill.

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.

You don't seem to understand the concept of insurance.

Let the finance professor explain it to you: the point is to protect yourself against a very costly but low probability event.

Insurance is not payment for a service you use regularly. You don't "use" your fire insurance or auto insurance often. If you do, it's no longer insurance.

[VOA]

I would support knee-capping the attorneys.

Careful, we don't want any comments here to even be interpreted
as promoting violence to sub-reptilian attorney demographic.
Especially for one famous trial attorney with that Breck Girl
hairdo!

[afnamvet]

Government forcing us into any insurance plan whatsoever is socialism and it’s unconstitutional.

I never like those words : Government forcing us, makes me clean and oil my guns.

[socialismisinsidious]

Socialized Medicine aka Universal Health Care PING LIST

FReepmail me if you want to be added to or removed from this ping list.

[xzins]

Government force is not necessarily a sign of socialism.

The constitution says that Congress has the power to call up the militia. That is force, and it is not socialism.

The constitution says that Congress can tax. That is force, and it is not socialism.

The constitution says that Congress is responsible to promote the general welfare. They require sewage systems. That is force but it is not socialism. (Although their ownership of the sewage utilities is.)

Socialism is when government owns the means of production, owns all property, and requires adherence to its central planning of every aspect of social life.

[redgirlinabluestate]

ONe of the biggest obstacles to real tort reform is that the trial lawyers, a wealthy special interest group, has the Democratic Party in their pocket (and, ahem, some Republicans).

"You can have affordable health care and a good environment for jobs. Or you can have rich trial lawyers filing frivolous lawsuits. Not both." ~~ Newt Gingrich

"Last year, U.S. corporations spent more money on tort claims than they did on R&D. If innovation is the key to our long term leadership, then some tort lawyers are cashing out our country's future....tort lawyers are ok with state reform, but not national reform. You know what state level tort reform means - it means that as long as there is one lawsuit-friendly state, they can sue almost any major, deep-pocketed company in America. No thanks, America needs national tort reform." ~~ Mitt Romney http://www.freerepublic.com/~unmarkedpackage/#spending

"The current system of litigation is too expensive for America, fails to provide justice for Americans and is being made steadily worse and more expensive by increasingly predatory trial lawyers who have more and more resources devoted to gaming the system to enrich themselves at the expense of individual Americans and American society. This is especially true in the healthcare system. Doctors are more important to our nation's health care system than trial lawyers. In order to ensure the availability of doctors it is important to create and/or maintain hard caps on non-economic damages in medical liability cases." ~~Newt Gingrich http://www.senatorfredsmith.com/content/Pages/show/id/12

.

One thing is certain, the status quo is not acceptable in health care or illegal immigration and Mitt Romney has the innovative ideas and the track record of success to tackle both.

[bw17]

Anti-trust regulations don’t apply to private businesses?

The insurance industry is the only industry granted such an exception.

[Jim Robinson]

So Romney’s proposing forcing everyone in the USA to sign up for medical insurance whether they want it or not as an anti-trust measure?

[bw17]

You evidently don’t live in Florida. And we’re hardly a socialist craphole state.

Last year, I found it laughable as Crist and his opponents were laying out their plans as to what they would do to reign in the sky-rocketing home insurance costs. Anybody with knowledge of McCarron-Ferguson knew that there was no way that anybody at the state level could reign in home insurance costs.

Insurance cannot be regulated at the state level. It ought to be regulated the same way public utilities are regulated.

[Rick_Michael]

“One thing is certain, the status quo is not acceptable in health care or illegal immigration and Mitt Romney has the innovative ideas and the track record of success to tackle both.”

I disagree on the latter.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929052/posts?page=12#12

[bw17]

No.

The anti-trust exemption for insurance companies is why insurance companies run roughshod over policy holders each and every day.

There are several solutions to the health care problems we’re facing:

Small businesses ought to be able to buy health insurance through national associations across state lines (a.k.a. Association health plans). However, this requires that the insurance industry is subject to federal oversight. In other words, McCarron Ferguson needs to be repealed.

All people need to be insured, or need to demonstrate the ability to pay their bills at the ER, so that the free-loaders quit driving up the price for everyone else.

Tort reform is a must. You can’t have OB’s paying $200,000/year for $250,000 worth of insurance. Those costs get passed right along to the patient...and their insurance companies.

A single-payer health plan ought to be avoided.

[Beagle8U]

“Insurance cannot be regulated at the state level. It ought to be regulated the same way public utilities are regulated.”

The free market can regulate it.

[Jim Robinson]

Government knows best.

[bw17]

Only to an extent. There is a reason why the Constitution grants to Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.

Insurance is interstate commerce...and because of the McCarron Ferguson act, the insurance industries are exempt from federal anti-trust regulations (making them the only private industry granted such a benefit).

[Beagle8U]

State regulations are driving up your insurance costs or its the risk factor of what and where you are insuring it.

Unless the entire country has an ins problem the same as Florida its a local problem and can be dealt with locally.

[DrC]

Romney’s plan isn’t perfect. First, my preference is for a mandate for CATASTROPHIC COVERAGE, not absurdly expensive front-end coverage that is the equivalent of trying to use auto insurance to pay for my gasoline. Second, I would have preferred an opt-out provision if someone could demonstrate they had the personal assets to cover a high-end loss or forego treatment entirely. However, even in this case, one potential problem is that life-time care for a quadriplegiac—as one example—can run into millions of dollars, but even keeping someone on life support for a few weeks can approach $1 million.

That said, in the context of the very imperfect policy environment created by federal emergency care mandates, I think that Romney’s state-level solution has the promise to move things more in the direction of what’s fair even if it wouldn’t be optimal.

Trying to collect after the fact is appealing but unrealistic. The $40+ billion in unpaid bills for the uninsured occurs DESPITE the efforts of hospitals to collect from these patients. Indeed, hospitals have been criticized for being TOO AGGRESSIVE in trying to collect these losses.
Collectively, the uninsured actually CAN pay these bills: it simply amounts to collecting <$100 monthly from each of them REGARDLESS OF THEIR HEALTH STATUS. That’s how insurance works: we don’t know ex ante who the unlucky one will be even though statistically we can be pretty certain these losses will amount to roughly $1000 apiece.

But in the general population, 10% of patients generate 70% of all spending, and 1% generate 30% of spending. For these unlucky 1 percenters, you’d be trying to collect $100,000 apiece, not $1,000. Good luck. But with a mandate, you would have collected an affordable amount from everyone and covering even these large bills wouldn’t be a problem.

Americans have a pretty absurd attitude about health insurance. I’ve paid my homeowner’s and auto insurance for years on end without collecting a dime: does that mean I feel gypped or taken advantage of? Of course not, I buy it because I like the piece of mind of not having to come up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in the event of something that happens that may be completely out of my control. So unless one has the assets to cover a very sizable financial loss, anyone going bare on health insurance is essentially “free-riding” on the rest of us since in the real world, when they’re on life support because of that unexpected heart attack they got even though, like Jim Fixx, they were in marathon-level shape, someone else will end up paying their tab. And I for one find it very objectionable to be FORCED to pay for such an individual’s care by their irresponsible decision to free-ride.

In short, the argument for an individual mandate originates in self-interest, not altruism, and I concur with an earlier poster who observed that Romney’s approach is almost the farthest thing from Hillarycare as one can imagine.

[pepperhead]

Great he is going on the offensive. I expect he will go on the offensive on our 2nd amendment rights too.............

[businessprofessor]

You make a strong case for mandates. However, I cannot imagine a mandate for catastrophic coverage only. Most people do not consider catastrophic coverage as health insurance. They prefer the coverage equivalent to using auto insurance to pay for gasoline. The rats have encouraged this thinking for a long time. The rats will not allow any mandate just for catastrophic coverage. I understand that the law in Massachusetts contains many mandated coverage areas beyond catastrophic care. The rats view universal health insurance as another opportunity for a new entitlement. They will only use the free riding issue to justify a new entitlement.