Free Republic

Ninety-two percent of the almost 2,000 physicians who responded to a Jackson Healthcare survey of physicians agree with Dr. Chad Hewitt. The number one way to reduce health care costs may be tort reform.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., explains why he voted against the health care bill By Nanette Light Senators will choke on a government-run health care plan, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., predicts. And that's about has far as his optimism reaches. He's anything but hopeful the health care bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives Nov. 7, will survive its route through the Senate. "It'll be interesting to see what the Senate comes up with, where the rules of the game are different," Cole said in a telephone interview Friday, when he revealed the basis behind his "no" vote during a...

It's natural to sympathize with the parents of Brandon Patch, the 18-year-old baseball pitcher who died after he was hit by a batted ball in 2003. Sooner or later, sympathy must yield to logic and reason, so when Brandon's parents sued the bat's manufacturer, Louisville Slugger, and a jury awarded them $850,000, they contributed to the terribly misguided notion that behind every tragedy lies a lawsuit. I haven't suffered what the Patches have suffered, and I pray that I never do. I understand that pursuing litigation gives them a sense that their son's random, pointless death was not so pointless....

Antitrust exemption: A 1945 law prevented the federal government from regulating all forms of insurance, leaving that duty to the states.[Huck's note--so did a 1787 law, called the 10th amendment]. As a result, the law also shielded insurers from federal antitrust laws that prohibit price-fixing and collusion. This is seen as a problem for residents in many areas where only one or two health insurers operate. Rather than go to a neighboring state where another insurer might be offering a better deal, residents are forced to choose between the insurers that are regulated by their state government. Buying across state...

Seventy-four percent of American physicians believe they have less control over the way they practice medicine than they did five years ago, mostly due to medical malpractice litigation. The majority, 85 percent, said the threat of medical malpractice litigation is their primary hindrance to practicing medicine as they see fit. “We found that regardless of a physician’s political affiliation, the respondents attributed the practice of defensive medicine to excessive waste in the health care system,”

WASHINGTON — After months spent criticizing Democrats' health overhaul plans, House Republicans have produced a draft proposal of their own. It's much shorter and focuses on bringing down costs rather than extending coverage to nearly all Americans. A 230-page draft was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. A spokeswoman for Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said changes were still being made before the bill would be finalized in time to offer as an alternative when Democrats begin floor debate on their bill, possibly at the end of this week.

In his Sept. 9 address before Congress, President Obama noted that litigation "may be contributing" to increasing health-care costs and promised to fund "demonstration projects" in the states to improve the liability system and to test "ideas about how to put patient safety first." Alas, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's health-care bill emerged last week, it became clear that Congress' leaders are less interested in funding demonstration projects that work than in keeping cash flowing from trial lawyers to the Democratic Party. Section 2351 of the Pelosi bill outlines incentive grants to the states to fund "medical liability alternative" demonstrations...

AN Indian man claims he has been cheated by the cosmetics firm that makes popular deodorant Lynx after failing to land a girlfriend for the past seven years. Vaibhav Bev has been using Lynx deodorant since 2002, in the hope the company's promotional campaign - which features scantily clad women throwing themselves at men - had some basis in real life. Mr Bev is suing the maker of Lynx - marketed as Axe in his home country - for more than $100,000, seeking compensation for "depression and psychological damage". "I used it for seven years but no girl came to...

A jury on Wednesday found that the maker of Louisville Slugger baseball bats failed to adequately warn about the dangers the product can pose, awarding a family $850,000 for the 2003 death of their son in a baseball game. The family of Brandon Patch argued that aluminum baseball bats are dangerous because they cause the baseball to travel at a greater speed. They contended that their 18-year-old son did not have enough time to react to the ball being struck before it hit him in the head while he was pitching in an American Legion baseball game in Helena in...

The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill): Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes...

<p>Prominent Houston attorney John O'Quinn was one of two men who died this morning when their SUV slammed into a large tree on Allen Parkway after the driver apparently lost control, police said.</p> <p>"I'm stunned. The community lost one of its biggest assets," said Rick Laminack, who worked with O'Quinn from 1987 until 2006. "He was a great lawyer who shared a lot of his wealth with people who needed help."</p>

The case of the Flying Imams reached a settlement; and it favors political correctness and misguided views on profiling and religious sensitivities over common sense. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which represented the imams, said the settlement is "a victory for civil rights." "The six imams are pleased," Hooper said. "Their rights were maintained by the settlement." This is no victory for civil rights. These imams gave reasonable cause for alarm, based as much upon behavioral profiling as much as religious and ethnic profiling. The settlement sends a message that favors stupidity over safety: That lawsuit...

Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way. Albert Freed (pictured) won a trip to Hawaii (not pictured). As part of the vacation celebration, Mrs. Freed bought her husband some new Hanes brand briefs. But Mr. Freed is a husky gentleman, and apparently the new trunks couldn’t contain all of his junk. He sued Hanes, claiming they made “defective” underwear.

Saying that Republicans have no solutions to the health care crisis is a flat out lie, and an attempt at distraction. The Democrats want the American people to think that there are no other solutions but their plan. They are trying to portray health care as so unfixable, beyond the power of the free market, that the only answer is the hand of government. They want us to believe that government will make it better, that we need the beaurocracy, that we are dependent on the politicians we elect for our basic health needs. They treat us as if we...

Below are some suggestions for lawmakers and judges to bring about a more just country: Intolerance-Justice should be based on each case and circumstance involving current law and precedent. The idiotic case of six-year-old Zachary Christie is akin to the type of lack of foresight that has parents throughout the land scratching their heads. Zachary had NO CLUE he was committing a crime with a nonflexible sentence of 45 days in a reform school. His crime? As a proud new Cub Scout, he brought a multifaceted eating and tool utensil to his school to show his little friends. Conclusion? When...

(PDF Format) Free Congress Foundation Commentary The Major Incurable Disease – Tort Terror By Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq. October 21, 2009 Unlike other countries, our Federal system and many of our State judicial systems encourage litigation against physicians and hospitals. The practice of medicine is almost unimaginatively sophisticated, as applicable knowledge continually becomes more complicated and more extensive.

Liberals have consistently used deception in their attempt to steer this nation to the far left, but as the old proverb states, sooner or later the truth comes to the light. But who would have thought it would have come from their own mouths? Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) on Cap-and-Trade: "Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax, and it's a great big one." Howard Dean on why there's no tort reform in health-care reform proposals:

Sen. Max Baucus' health care bill consists of a dog's breakfast of taxes after taxes after more taxes. With so much new pressure being put on taxpayers, you might think senators would jump at the chance to find some savings that could eliminate the need for some of the tax increases. Think again. Too many senators are in the hip pocket of the wealthy plaintiffs' lawyers for them to consider any savings that would diminish the lawyers' jackpots. On Oct. 9, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that lawsuit reforms could save the government about $54 billion in health care costs...

      | |     Manhattan Moment [Print]  [Email]         James R. Copland: Here's what is stopping tort reform By: James R. Copland OpEd ContributorOctober 14, 2009 In his September 9, nationally televised speech before a joint session of Congress, President Obama made news by saying that medical-malpractice litigation "may be contributing to unnecessary costs" in the U.S. health-care sys¡©tem.Since then, trial-lawyer advocates--including their lobbying arm, the American Association for Justice (AAJ), and various allied "consumer" groups such as the Center for Justice and Democracy--have been engaged in a fierce counter-attack. Front-and-center among the lawyer-advocates' arguments is that...

Advanced Ambulance Chasing by: Allie Winegar Duzett, October 14, 2009 The lawsuit industry makes up about six percent of America’s GDP and costs thirty times more than what the NIH spends annually on cures for deadly diseases, said Lawrence J. McQuillan at a recent Heritage Foundation event. McQuillan, the director of Business and Economic Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, has dedicated countless hours to the study of tort and the potential effects of tort reform on the American economy (many of his results can be found in the PRI publication “Jackpot Justice: The True Cost of America’s Tort System”)....

Tort$ are not pastries by: Allie Winegar Duzett, October 14, 2009 With politicians and protesters right and left screaming about Obama’s proposed health care reform, Bill Batchelder and Lawrence J. McQuillan have another idea: focusing on tort reform instead. This was the idea investigated at a recent Heritage Foundation forum entitled Tort Reform in the States: Protecting Consumers and Enhancing Economic Growth. In introducing the panel speakers, Hans van Spakovsky of Heritage briefly discussed some of the problems relating to tort. The American tort system, he related, cost two-hundred and fifty-two billion dollars in 2007—or about one thousand dollars...

Topping Torts by: Allie Winegar Duzett, October 14, 2009 When Haley Barbour was first elected governor there, he said at the recent Heritage Foundation event, Tort Reform in the States: Protecting Consumers and Enhancing Economic Growth, Mississippi was the worst place for tort abuse. The state had been dealing with bad state Supreme Court decisions, extreme lawsuit abuse, and campaigns to stop lawsuit reform. So Barbour decided to run for governor on a platform of tort reform. This was vital, Barbour said, to getting tort reform passed at all. According to Barbour, state tort reform can never pass without the...

NEW YORK (Legal Newsline)-Medical malpractice litigation has driven up U.S. health care costs dramatically, translating into higher costs for consumers, a study said Tuesday. The report by the Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy said the direct cost of medical malpractice litigation is roughly $30.4 billion annually.

U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land, in Columbus, has come down hard on birther attorney Orly Taitz, fining her $20,000 for willfully abusing her right to practice law. I suspect Taitz won’t have that right much longer. “The Court finds that counsel’s conduct was willful and not merely negligent. It demonstrates bad faith on her part. As an attorney, she is deemed to have known better. She owed a duty to follow the rules and to respect the Court. Counsel’s pattern of conduct conclusively establishes that she did not mistakenly violate a provision of law. She knowingly violated Rule 11....

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A moderate Pennsylvania Democrat came out strongly Sunday against the possibility of imposing a cap on medical malpractice damages as part of comprehensive health care reform legislation currently under consideration in Congress. “I don’t think the way to go is to limit the rights of Americans who are injured by negligent or intentional conduct,” Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey who is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “A $250,000 cap on damages, in my humble opinion, is insulting to our system of justice,” Casey also...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline)-The health care overhaul bill congressional Democrats hope to send President Barack Obama this year will very likely contain some measure of tort reform, a Sacramento-area congresswoman told Legal Newsline on Saturday.

Reforming medical-malpractice laws could save the federal government $54 billion over 10 years and slash doctors' and hospitals' insurance costs by 10 percent, according to a congressional study released yesterday. But there's one problem -- none of the Democratic-run proposals advancing in Congress include any of the reforms covered in the Congressional Budget Office analysis. The CBO report was based on recommendations from Republican lawmakers that would curb the number of suits filed and limit medical-malpractice payments to victims and their lawyers. Savings would be realized by reducing "defensive" medicine costs that doctors use to avoid litigation and through lower...

Bolstering what is likely to be one of the Republicans' key health care reform arguments on the Senate floor, Congress' budget scorekeeper ruled that medical malpractice reform could reduce the federal deficit by $54 billion over 10 years. Tort reform has been one of Republicans' top health care reform proposals, but it hasn't been strongly embraced by Democrats. President Obama, in his address to a joint session of Congress last month, said he would consider tort reform legislation as part of his health care plan. The trial lawyers bar, which strongly opposes tort reform is a major financial supporter of...

Many experts have pointed to tort reform as a key element of any effort to hold down the costs of health care: The New York Times has reported that as a result of such lawsuits, “doctors have responded by changing the way they deliver babies, often seeing a relatively minor anomaly on a fetal heart monitor as justification for an immediate cesarean.” .. President Barack Obama said to the American Medical Association: ..Now, just hold on to your horses here, guys. (Laughter.) I want to be honest with you. I’m not advocating caps on malpractice awards — (boos from some...

Litigation: The Founding Fathers envisioned the states as laboratories for ideas and choices. If the administration needs a demonstration project for successful tort reform, it need look no further than Mississippi. When President Obama said during his health care speech to Congress that he would "look into" malpractice reform and support "demonstration projects" at the state level, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a Republican, responded: "If they want a demonstration project, come down to Mississippi. I'll show you a demonstration project." Mississippi enacted tort reform in 2004, including caps on medical malpractice awards. As a result, the number of medical...

There has been a lot of talk in Washington about cutting wasteful health-care spending, but it is troubling that such talk has not created a sense of urgency for national tort reform. It is especially frustrating because states have already shown that curbing junk lawsuits can cut costs, create jobs, and increase the quality of care available to patients. I know this because that is exactly what happened in Missouri when, as governor, I helped to enact comprehensive reforms. I took office in January 2005 at a time when runaway lawsuits were driving up the cost of doing business in...

Going on now. Very interesting stuff.

First an algebraic certainty: Health Redistribution (sounds a lot like wealth redistribution hmmmmmmmm) minus lack of funds minus enough doctors to handle 30 to 47 million more patients (depending on the number de jour of our Dear Leader) minus 45% of doctors threatening retirement if Obamacare is enacted minus a half trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare and Medicade plus six billion dollars in new taxes on insurance companies = Government-run HC(health care) = rationing = death panels = the last straw of an overstretched economy and patience of Americans. Credit for the formula goes to my cousin and Oxford...

The month after Barbara Ann Stanislav and William J. Papp Jr. saw each other's profiles on the Internet dating site Match.com in 2005, the two horse lovers made plans to go on a date to a Westchester, N.Y., stable. According to Stanislav, whose equestrian skills were a bit rusty, Papp assured her that he would give her a gentle, safe horse to ride. But on their third date, when the two met on a winter afternoon, the day took a tragic turn. As Papp and another rider were performing jumps, Stanislav was seriously injured when her horse "Teddy" suddenly lunged...

Continuing this weekend's unintentional theme of "toddlers and food service," today we bring you the sad tale of a Quincy, Mass. 23-month-old whose parents are suing Dunkin' Donuts after he was burned by a hash brown. A hash brown that fell out of his mouth and onto his neck. "It took only seconds for the extremely high temperature of the interior portion of the food item to severely burn and blister (Cullen's) skin," attorney Joseph K. Curran Jr. wrote in a complaint filed in Norfolk Superior Court. Before handing the hash brown to her son to eat, the boy's mother,...

Discourse: The reaction to the congressman's outburst shows what happens when you judge this president by the content of his character. In a post-racial presidency, charges of racism are the new last refuge of scoundrels.When Joe Wilson, the decorum-challenged South Carolina Republican, reacted to President Obama's assertion that there was nothing in health care legislation giving coverage to illegal aliens by shouting "You lie!" he knew, as his critics ignore, that there was nothing requiring proof of citizenship either. A nonpartisan Congressional Research Service study found that the House health care bill at that moment did not restrict illegal immigrants...

Health Costs: Lawyers are responsible for more unneeded procedures than "greedy" doctors. But instead of capping malpractice awards, bureaucrats will soon decide which treatments are OK and whether you're worth it.Health Costs: Lawyers are responsible for more unneeded procedures than "greedy" doctors. But instead of capping malpractice awards, bureaucrats will soon decide which treatments are OK and whether you're worth it.

In an interview with Steve Croft this evening, Obama said the following about tort reform: KROFT: If it came down to getting this plan passed, would you be willing to do more in the area of tort reform and malpractice insurance? Would you be willing to agree to caps, for example, on malpractice judgments? PRESIDENT OBAMA: What I would be willing to do is to consider any ideas out there that would actually work in terms of reducing costs, improving the quality of patient care. So far the evidence I've seen is that caps will not do that. Obama missed...

Barack Obama offered this "olive brancn" to Republicans during his health care overhaul speech to the joint session of Congress on Wednesday. After spending most of the speech deriding his opposition, Obama finally got to the subject of tort reform which the White Nouse had promised Obama would pursue to get Republicans on board.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- As President Obama turns up the heat on health care reform, one new and surprising detail to emerge is his pledge to tackle medical malpractice. "I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I have talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs," Obama said Wednesday night. Obama's decision to wade into the issue has some insiders scratching their heads, because cutting down on medical malpractice lawsuits is a Republican tenet.

about 40 percent of medical malpractice lawsuits filed in America were without merit. Eighty percent of physicians cite fear of being sued in their decisions to practice defensive medicine. If we want to try to make health care more affordable, we can't leave tort reform out of the equation... In the 24 U.S. States with tort reform, their insurance rates have dropped 27 percent in the past five years, and some 15,000 doctors have returned to practice in Texas alone.

Letter I sent my elected representatives: Dear #### Please vote NO on the health care bill package President Obama is trying to push on America. We can’t afford it and neither can the future generations. My husband and I would like to see: 1. tort reform. 2. the ability to purchase insurance in any state. 3. the deductible (high or low) of our choice. 4. medical savings account. Growing up in a low-income home, I do know that there are many options for people who cannot afford health care. There were then; there are now. Thank you for reading this.

BATON ROUGE -- Louisiana's top health official said Thursday that the state will keep an open mind on whether to apply for the demonstration projects touted by President Barack Obama this week as a way to reduce medical malpractice suits. But state Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine said the pilot programs Obama is proposing would likely be ineffective in reducing health-care costs unless they remove doctors' fears of getting sued. "The state of Louisiana would probably participate in anything that would help improve patient safety," Levine said. "But this is not real tort reform." Levine's comments came a day...

But it's unclear whether Obama intends to work tort reform into the bill at all. He treated his entry into the issue Wednesday night as an executive-level regulatory change, directing Sebelius to immediately work toward starting the pilot programs in individual states.

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wants levies on insurers to pay for Obamacare and fines for families who don't sign up. To keep Obamacare alive, Baucus has proposed a Rube Goldberg scheme of fees and fines on insurers and the uninsured designed to forcibly bring everyone into the loving and protective arms of the nanny state...

Reform: The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wants levies on insurers to pay for ObamaCare and fines for families who don't sign up. We can cut costs and expand coverage without sacrificing freedom.To keep ObamaCare alive, Montana Democrat Max Baucus has proposed a Rube Goldberg scheme of fees and fines on insurers and the uninsured designed to forcibly bring everyone into the loving and protective arms of the nanny state. To help finance his Plan B, Baucus would impose annual fees of $6 billion on health insurers, $4 billion on medical-device makers, $2.3 billion on drug manufacturers and $750...

Tort reform and fixing the medical malpractice insurance system in the U.S. isn’t a “silver bullet” that will fix health care, but it’s a necessary element of comprehensive health care reform. No health care reform should pass without it.

The U.S. Justice Department is urging a federal judge in California to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the constitutional eligibility of Barack Obama to hold the office of president.

President Obama wants everyone to believe that American health care is in a crisis, and he wants everyone to be willing to sacrifice in order to solve that crisis... President Obama wants everyone to sacrifice. Well, not quite everyone. There is one group that President Obama doesn't mention, one group he doesn't demand sacrifice for the greater good. President Obama is protecting the plaintiffs' lawyers who sue doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies and reap billions in fees from the tort lottery...

We've always suspected that fear of angering trial lawyers was the only reason President Obama refused to embrace tort reform as a crucial part of achieving his goal of reduced health care costs. Now we know for sure. A moment of candor by Howard Dean, the former chairman of the DNC and an enthusiastic backer of Obama's health reform initiative, confirmed our suspicions. "The reason that tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everyone else they were taking on," Dean said...