Posted on 01/29/2012 8:55:44 PM PST by red flanker
On the campaign trail, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum says he will push to limit payments to victims in medical malpractice lawsuits, which he blames for unnecessarily driving up health-care costs. And over the course of his two decades in politics, he repeatedly spoke in favor of capping such awards.
But Santorum testified in support of his wife when she filed a medical malpractice suit in 1999 that sought $500,000, twice the cap in his 1994 legislative proposal. Karen Santorum claimed that a Fairfax chiropractor had left her with a permanent back injury that probably would result in a lifetime of pain medication and restricted mobility.
This fall, while campaigning in Iowa, Santorum told reporters that he backed some limits but that his wife did not sue for “pain and suffering, which is the area I think we should cap.”
Although the lawsuit did not seek a specific figure for pain and suffering, the former senator testified in the case about the emotional and physical toll on his wife and how that justified a sizable monetary award, transcripts show. The judge in the case also made clear that the majority of the $350,000 the jury awarded the family was largely for unspecific losses and pain and suffering, an amount he concluded was “excessive.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Since there were a number of Santorum supporters, it would seem someone would have posted this article already. But it points out two things about Santorum: blatant hypocrisy and running for the presidency while his wife apparently has a "permanent" back injury.
Everyone is concerned about his ill child, but it raises a question of why he would leave his family to run for the highest office when his wife has a permanent injury that could endanger both her and her children?
What we have here is something EVERY LAWYER knows about ~ there's the compensatory aspect in a medical malpractice suit ~ no one is claiming that victims should not recover sufficient funds from a suit to relieve them from the costs of injuries that occur as a result of malpractice.
Alas, that's not where the lawyers are going to make the big bucks.
It's over on the PUNITIVE side that you get those multimillion dollar judgments! That's the side the lawyers DO NOT WANT CAPPED. It's also the side the reformers WANT TO CAP!
Lawyers, and Washington Post propagandists, attempt to confound the TWO DIFFERENT ISSUES ~ recovery for actual injury, and punitive.
We accept the WashPo's spin on our candidates' we are getting Obama.
I will vote for Santorum over Romney and Romney over 0.
I will vote for Paris Hilton over 0.
I will vote for Perez Hilton over 0.
You know where you can stick the WashPo.
So Newt Gingrich lacks the character to be president (just ask Ann Coulter) and is really a “progressive” (just ask Glenn Beck). Now we learn that Santorum is not a real conservative. Guess Romney’s our only choice—after all, he’s a true conservative—just ask Bay Buchanan!
No, that’s an assinine argument. Like arguing that if you don’t support government subsidies, you shouldn’t be taking your child tax credits or special deductions.
The idea that a person should voluntarily adhere to a rule that doesn’t exist is silly, whether pushed by liberals as it usually is, or by a random conservative thinking “anything goes” when trying to sell his own flawed candidate.
Santorum may have been technically correct.
Sued only for the cost of the treatments expected to be needed to ameliorate said pain and suffering, not for any punitive award for said pain and suffering.
I'm surprised we could find anyone but an abortion advocate who'd believe that a doctor shouldn't be sued no matter what he does to his victims (patients in Leftwingtard parlance).
"They" actually argue that ~ and go so far as to fight most vigorously against laws that require abortuaries to meet minimum standards of sanitation.
Not to hijack the thread into another issue, the Malpractice Cap debate isn't about compensatory issues, it's about punitive issues and corrupt trial lawyers ~ else, you'd probably have no way to corral bad doctors and charletans.
Wow! The Washington Post must be desperate for “dirt”.
Is suing illegal?
He sure looked out for his wife’s interests unlike Mike Dukakis.
I vote for Santorum.
Blatantly false title. Santorum was not a party to his wife’s suit at all.
If this is the foulest mud that can be slinged at Santorum, then Santorum has little to fear the rest of the way.
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