Posted on 08/23/2009 12:20:14 PM PDT by ScaniaBoy
Not really; but have you ever heard anyone in Washington bring up the exorbitant, unaffordable rates lawyers charge! THAT'S BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL FRICKIN' LAWYERS IN CONGRESS!!!!!!!!
I am only bigoted in one thing in life; I believe everyone should be treated equal by race, creed, religion, age, gender, or occupation. I only HATE one type of people in this world: LAWYERS! I don't even care if they call themselves "conservative" lawyers; that is an oxymoron. I know this won't be popular on this site because many so-called conservative lawyers can really say the right things; but they are lawyers. Don't ever believe any of them.
Carpenters build things. Doctors heal. Preachers preach. Lawyers lie. End of story. You will never convince me otherwise. Please look at my tagline for my opinion.
According to the House bill, doctors will act as independent contractors, rather than as government employees, and will expressly be subject to liability actions.
The government panel making decisions about one's health care, that the doctor is supposed to execute, is immune from legal action.
Can't stand the weasel.
The one that gets me is "Public Option"...
We'll eventually grind ya' down......
Go to the link. Read the numbers. The insurance premiums are on the chart.
Now as to defensive medicine. All we have are estimates. If it is 10% (which I doubt) then we’re looking at $240 billion.
Now sit back and look at this situation.
Doctors pay $11 billion for malpractice insurance and out of that amount, the insurance companies pay out about $5 billion. At 40%, evil greedy shyster lawyers will get about $2 billion.
Then, out of this overwhelming fear of lawsuits, for which doctors pay $11 billion in insurance, these same doctors go out and spend another $240 billion in defensive medical costs. AND, this $240 billion stays within the medical community.
And, us being good little gullible people we get mad at the evil lawyers for getting maybe $2 billion, while the medical community openly admits to wasting money on defensive medicine, possibly to the tune of $240 billion, or 120 times what the lawyers get.
Then, the intellectual giants of the GOP, blame the rise in medical costs on the evil lawyers, and seek to protect the saintly doctors.
Now, c’mon. Do you smell a rat?
parsy, who sees little rat dropping thingies around the doctor’s offices.
No chance. We'll be controlled and reimbursed like assembly-line workers, but we'll still be eligible to be sued for being fallable humans. That you can count on.
Some ob/gyns just don’t want to deliver babies. Having had a few myself, they tend to come at odd hours of the day and night. One, way back in 1974 interrupted me watching a Fu Manchu movie at about 10 or 11 at nite. We were at the hospital until 2 or 3, then came home. Then rushed back at 5am.
The second one had the good graces to be born during the afternoon, but this was after a few false alarms at weird hours.
The third, I forget when he arrived, but it seems I was in the middle of the House of Frankenstein movie one night.
Maybe some of these ob/gyns are piling up so much money in their practice, they don’t want to get up at weird hours or interrupt their Thursday afternoon golf games.
Lawyers get blamed for a lot of stuff. They’re kind of built in whipping boys. That would be obvious if you read the link.
parsy, who stopped at 3
Here’s what gives me pause about that scenario. A lawyer has to invest a significant amount of his own money in a medmal. Probably $60,000 on the low side, to God knows what on the up side. He has to invest a heck of a lot of his time. These cases can take years.
Now, assuming that some lawyers do file frivolous lawsuits, this ain’t the place they are going to file them. Too much investment. If you think it is hard to find an ob/gyn, try to find a lawyer who will actually take a medical malpractice case. The truth is, most malpractice goes un-sued, by far.
parsy, who sayeth the truth shall set thee free!
Do you think there is any good side to doctors doing more c-sections? What do you think the alternative is?
parsy, who is curious
That's a really wild wild assumption. I wouldn't be so brave. /s
Palin has the most “instinctive” politican instincts of any politician in my lifetime, in my estimation. This includes even Reagan, who I saw one time and Loved!
I doubt she would give herself such credit: she simply speaks the Truth as she sees it, and which is informed by her PRINCIPLES. The reason it is so powerful is that most of America has those same Principles, and that they see so few politicians or other commentators abiding by principle.
I agree with you about Beckel being more radical than Carville, but I never shut him down. Instead of being simply mouthy, he always (well, normally) presents a rational, if fatally flawed, argument.
MICHAEL MOORE?
Parsy, are you serious? You want me to accept an analysis of tort costs put out by Michael Moore and "Center for Democracy and Justice"?
Are you aware of who the Center for Justice and Democracy is? It is a Naderite organization who promotes suing everybody, or in their words "... a non-profit, tax-exempt group, founded by consumer advocates to protect the civil justice system."! Here are their advisers- Finley is another real gem, good company for Michael Moore in their board meetings. Here is a list of the suing organizations that are in AIR, part of CJD - lawyer lovers all of them! PIRG, "Citizen Action", etc... All the wonderful Nader for president support groups.
Another example of CJD's wonderful "work" is this: "The Secret Chamber - The Inner Workings of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Hijacking of an Election." They are just another Democrat front organization. How many other threads have you infected with this faulty analysis? Please refrain from citing CJ&D and AIR on this site any more. I may actually start to consider you troll and worth zotting.
Here is a report from the Amerian Enterprise Institute (AEI), who I have found to be among the best organizations to trust, along with Heritage. It systematically destroys the reports from CJ&D and AIR. Here is another place where critiques of CJ&D may be found.
IF you are SERIOUS and want to honestly know what the tort costs are, on the other hand, THIS REPORT was prepared by the most respected accounting firm I know- Price Waterhouse. It goes through actual numbers: costs of insurance, suits, and defensive medicine. Unfortunately, it does NOT reflect the costs of Doctor's time and added stress in defending themselves in court and other "unaccountable" costs.
After studying the Price Waterhouse document, then look again at the unaudited Naderite/lawyer study. Who do you really trust? Your saying "the facts are what they are" and other silly things on this thread should really embarrass you into silence and introspection for a while. CJ&D duped you, just as they intend to dupe other Americans: the trial lawyers meal ticket.
Yeah, and I just can’t wait to see health care by doctors who aren’t afraid of having to go to court. Let’s see, currently the medical community is killing about 100,000 to 200,000 Americans needlessly. . .
parsy, who figures that number will skyrocket
Sort of like saying when a person spends several hundred dollars a year for theft insurance and buys a gun to protect himself, the home owner is to blame for that cost to society, not the crooks.
Who do you go see first when you get sick? Your doctor or your lawyer?
A very good friend of mine, Dr. Clark, WAS an ObGyn. He left that service though he enjoyed it, due to the cost of malpractice insurance. This was over 12 years ago, and the cost of such insurance for ObGyn’s has skyrocketed since then.
For EVERY BABY born right now, malpractice insurance raises the costs on the order of $2000.
This, for something that an EMT friend of mine did in the back of his vehicle on a normal fire call.
Something is wrong, and it is not the doctors or insurance companies who are wrong.
And I am nice enough to copy and paste my answer to your reply, to wit:
Thank you for your thoughtful post. I have read two of the reports so far, the AEI report and the Price Waterhouse one. I do not have a printer at home, but tomorrow I will print them out to go over them in more detail.
First, a thought experiment. Let’s assume you are a new immigrant to our country and you just got naturalized where you vote. Your friends, other immigrants tell you that the Dems are the way to go. They say the GOP is the party of the rich and cares nothing about human beings, whereas the Democrats are just God’s little angels on earth. Being a skeptical immigrant, you want to get the real scoop on the democrats first. Which of two sites do yo go to? To get the real scoop, do you go to DU (Democrat Underground) or do you go to FR (freerepublic)?
I’m betting FR, because you want to know the things your friends AREN’T telling you. Same with some of the sites I go to.
So, if the only site I went to was the AEI site you mentioned, I might think tort reform was good and insurance companies were God’s gift to humanity. What I wouldn’t get are NUMBERS.
So on the site I went to, I GET NUMBERS. NUMBERS FROM THE INSURANCE COMPANIES THEMSELVES.
I have provided the link before but if you need it, let me know. Go to Exhibit A, page 19. Here’s the number straight from A M Best:
Total malpractice premiums 2008......$10,694,165,000 (about 11 billion)
Total malpractice payouts 2008.....$4,694,956,000 (about 5 billion)
Total health care costs 2008 is about 2.4 trillion. That source is either internet, wiki, or buried in several of the links.
Now, being a free American, who has a right to own a calculator, do the math. My answer is that it is less than 1/2 of a percent. That includes the insurance companys’ profit.
Now if you want to cut health care costs, it is obvious from these two very well documented numbers, that you ain’t going to cut very much on this item.
Now to get the numbers up, some want to add “defensive medicine” to the mix. In other words, in order to save this little teeny weeny 1/2%, the doctors are going to go out there and spend some unknown amount. So assume it is 10% of overall costs.
Once again,do the math. That would put the cost of defensive medicine at 240 billion dollars. Maybe. Maybe doctors really are stupid enough to spend $240 billion dollars so that they can avoid the $5 billion dollars in actual payouts.
Step back and look at what you’re saying. $240 billion because of the huge out of control tort system that is gobbling up a whole $5 billion. Now, assuming that number is right, who is it who’s getting the $240 billion? It ain’t evil ‘trial lawyers”. It’s honest good hardworking DOCTORS and health care providers.
Ya think there might be a little something shady going on there?
And, lets take your Price Waterhouse report. Why don’t you go back to it, and tell free republic, in your own words what that one chart says about “poor quality healthcare” and how it contributes to the skyrocketing health care costs. Its your report, so I will give you some time to go get that switch off the bush and bring it back to freerpublic. Cause if I have to go get the switch, I promise I am going to say some very nasty and hurtful things (but true) about the health care industry.
Now as to the reports themselves. The AEI report is nice, but provides no numbers. The Price Waterhouse report is professional but on “defensive” costs is once again estimating the costs. Benefits are not even considered. Yet, even the Price Waterhouse report finds the direct liability type costs are in the 1%-2% range. So we still don’t really know what the impact of “defensive medicine” is.
Now as to the veiled threat to move to “zot” me. I have been on freerepublic for over 11 years. I am conservative and toe the line on everything except economic issues. There, I am admittedly more of a progressive ala that famous Republican, Teddy Roosevelt.
It is my opinion that the GOP has been “body snatched” by the libertarians and anarcho-capitalists. I have been honest and open and vocal about this for over 11 years.
Should I ever get zotted for this, life will go on. The only people I ever see get upset on freerepublic about me, are those whose minds are so closed they can not tolerate anybody who challenges them.
FWIW, I happen to like Michael Moore. I think he has a great sense of humor. I loved it when he was chasing around the head of GM. After the recent Wall Street debacle, you have to kinda think Moore’s skepticism about big business wasn’t entirely misplaced. I liked his film, “Sicko.” Amazing how many people didn’t get outraged at the insurance companys finding ways to deny coverage. I watched “Bowling for Columbine” I thought it sucked. I could never figure out what his point was. So what if Kmart sold bullets? Its a free country. Thought he was way off base there.
So you see, its possible to get thoughts and ideas from the other side without going over to the other side. And sometimes, the other side might have a better perspective on an issue than we do. I think it is certainly the case with tort reform and certain economic issues.
So as far as zotting, let your conscience be your guide. That’s what I do.
Once again, thank you for your links. I will print out and read them tomorrow.
parsy, who ain’t afraid of the truth or changing his mind
So, once again, do I need to go that switch or are you going to go get it?
parsy, whose momma used to make him do this
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