Friday, July 17, 2009
Health care reform bonus!
I suppose it should not surprise us that the House Democrats slipped in a gift to the trial bar in the health care reform legislation just passed. Fortunately, the bewhipped Republicans in the Senate not only spotted the provision but worked up the mojo to put it on ice, at least for the time being. Yet another reason why no representative in this Republic ought to vote on legislation he or she has not read. There's too much sneaky stuff in there.
No wonder all these people are so unhappy.
CWCID: Mark Hemingway, at The Corner and Glenn Reynolds.
16 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Jul 18, 01:57:00 AM:
It is simple really. If these things are 1000's of pages long they need to have weeks and weeks to fully go through these things. Makes you think they don't want anyone to know.
By 
JPMcT, at
Sat Jul 18, 08:03:00 AM:
It's no wonder that most schools don't have Civics classes anymore. imagine telling the next generation of children that we are supposed to have a representative government??
By , at
Sat Jul 18, 10:09:00 AM:
One of the few protections we have against further democrat theft and criminality is to insist that any new medical laws apply to members of Congress and all public sector employees.
We must all contact our Congressman to be sure that he/she knows that if a new plan isn't good enough for him/her, it isn't good enough for us and that his/her job in the next election depends on understanding this point.
By , at
Sat Jul 18, 10:33:00 AM:
H. Res. 615 would do just that, Anon.
In an effort to help derail Democratic socialist health care laws, Fleming has proposed
H. Res. 615, which would urge congress to “forgo their right to participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and agree to enroll under that public option.”
It's a start.
Getting back to the lawsuit angle.
The year I graduated high school my father, the doctor, told me "Remember how I said, Don't worry about paying for college? Well, start worrying. My malpractice insurance premiums have just wiped out every penny I ever saved."
That was 1974. The lawsuit lawyers have done way more to damage our medical profession than most people realize.
This latest revelation turns my stomach. I had hoped that some of the change would be for our benefit, not the special interest groups and lobbyists.
By , at
Sat Jul 18, 02:43:00 PM:
Qui tam actions have an important role to play in the American legal system and could perhaps do more. Qui tam actions could be viewed as outsourcing government lawyer work to the free market. That being said, this was terribly designed and I'm glad it was struck down. But I'd like to see more avenues for citizens to force third parties to disgorge ill-gotten profits that the government isn't interested in recovering. After all, they are our dollars.
Second,Tyree, if your father's life savings were wiped out by medical malpractice premiums, he didn't have substantial savings anyway. Until shown otherwise, I'm highly doubtful the premiums could consume savings that would be sufficient to allow you to attend college. I'd be happy to be shown the error of my thinking though.
By , at
Sat Jul 18, 03:59:00 PM:
Off topic, from Babalu Blog, which translated this from an online paper from Catalonia province in Spain, breaking news from Honduras:
“The National Directors of Criminal Investigation seized various computers from the Presidential Palace that had recorded the supposed results of the referendum to reform the constitution that the deposed leader, Manuel Zelaya, was planning to conduct on July 28, the day he was removed from office.
The official investigation now deals with the possible crime of fraud and falsification of documents due to the fact that some of the certified voting results had been filled with the personal information of individuals that supposedly participated in the failed referendum that did not take place because of the coup.
One of the district attorneys that participated in the operation that took place this Friday showed reporters an official voting result from the Technical Institute Luis Bogran, of Tegucigalpa, in which the specific number of people that participated in table 345, where there were 550 ballots, 450 of which were votes in favor of Zelaya's proposal and 30 were against, in addition to 20 blank ballots and 30 ballots, which were nullified.
The seizure took place on the third floor of the building attached to the Ministry of the Presidency that had been rented to the ex-minister of the Interior, Enrique Flores Lanza. The deputy district attorney, Roberto Ramirez, declared this area as a "crime scene" and, although he did not want to provide further details, said that further evidence had been found that could be categorized as crimes of fraud, embezzlement of funds, falsification of documents, and abuse of authority. ”
As others have asked, how long will this take to get into the ENGLISH LANGUAGE press, such as AP, Reuters, etc.?
By , at
Sat Jul 18, 07:30:00 PM:
Turnout was moderate for our event. We had a couple of dozen protesters lining up along Lewis Avenue in Garden Grove. Peak turnout was 30-40, with some folks coming and going.
Peak turnout was 30? How compelling. Not.
By , at
Sun Jul 19, 12:05:00 AM:
T.A.H. -
Typical dodge by someone with no facts to back up his position, by making uneducated guesses about something you can't possible know anything about. I was there, and my father's premiums doubled and then doubled again. Malpractice insurance premiums are what drove doctors in the US out of private practice and into corporations. Your doubts can't change the truth.
By , at
Sun Jul 19, 12:24:00 AM:
A few minutes research found dozens of references to the malpractice insurance crisis of the 1970s with no hard data. It appears the lawyers refer to it as a "crisis" while the doctors and insurance companies called it a crisis, without the quotes.
Once again, I was there, and the last family vacation we could afford was in 1973. A few years after that my father spent his summer vacation at home helping his sons build a fish pond. It was fun but but after a day of hard work he broke down crying because that was all he could afford to do after 25 years of practicing medicine.
I've gotten used to lawyers ignoring the human suffering they cause, but I'll never get used to their victims cries.
By , at
Sun Jul 19, 08:59:00 AM:
Let me ask you, Tyree, have you gotten used to the cries of the victims of doctors? You know, when they botch delivert, and the baby suffers oxygen deprivation and brain damage? Have you gotten used to the cries of the victims of accountants? You know, when they defraud their clients and cause business to fold? Have you gotten used to the cries of the victims of stock brokers?
I could go on. My point is that every profession has individuals who are victimizers. And you can go for the emotional duck but here, again, is my point:
My bull**** detector starts pinging when you say your father's savings, sufficient to prevent you from worrying about paying for college, were wiped out by an increase in malpractice premiums. College was cheaper in the 70s but it still wasn't cheap.
It's cute to see you attack me for a lack of hard data but are unable to provide any yourself.
By , at
Sun Jul 19, 01:05:00 PM:
I'll match your "victim of accountants" T.A.H. and raise you one "victim of frivolous lawsuit". Here in Orange County there is a lawyer who has sued hundreds businesses in one year for $5000 each because she claimed they didn't comply with the ADA. The money taken in this exercise does nothing to make the world more accessible, a $40 an hour handyman is needed for that. It did make a lawyer very wealthy on the backs of hundreds of hard working small businesses.
The lawyers who sue doctors helped make this crisis, and tort law reformation could help fix it. Let's stop the lawyers first, before they ruin some other part of our economy.
There are doctors who make mistakes, my father wasn't one of them. He belonged to a profession that was sued, and his insurance rates went up, a lot, because of it.
Your "detector" is way off base. I put myself through a semester at Cal State Fullerton with $800 in savings and a $40 a weekend job.
I did not mean to "attack" you, however, the wording of my first sentence was personal and that doesn't meet my own standards. I will rewrite it.
"Your statements dodge the question and has no facts to back it up. It makes uneducated assertions about an unknown situation."
I welcome your response.
By Georg Felis, at
Sun Jul 19, 02:48:00 PM:
Qui tam actions over "health" stand to net the trial lawyers billions of dollars (not just millions) over the next years, if they can get the Dems to restructure the law "just a bit". And that money would come out of all of our pockets.
I really didn't think I would be saying this again, but Thank God for the Republicans. Keep it up guys.
By , at
Sun Jul 19, 03:17:00 PM:
By , at
Sun Jul 19, 10:46:00 PM:
This was put in the bill for one reason, when the healthcare industry is nationalized the ambulance chasers will be out of a job so congress gave them a way to stay employed. The trial lawyers are stupid they better understand they stand to lose big if Obamacare becomes law.
By , at
Mon Jul 20, 03:13:00 AM:
I wish that were true, Old Crow, but they are far from stupid. The trial lawyers are some of the richest, brightest and self serving of all of the lobbyists that buy influence in Washington. The inclusion of this passage in a "health care" bill is proof enough of that. Once they close down health care they will simply start suing other people.
By , at
Mon Jul 20, 06:37:00 PM:
You guys aren't yet thinking about this with enough villainy in mind. If ambulance chasers have one rule, it's "sue the deep pocket!". Who is the world's deepest pocket? Why, the US Treasury, and it's citizenry guarantors (you and me) who stand behind it! That's who.
There is no tort reform in the proposal before Congress. None. Instead of suing insurance companies for payment and dissatisfaction with coverage the lawyers will sue the Treasury. Mark my words, these people are far more evil than you can believe, and the tort lawyers will win big in this (still only "proposed"!) nationalization.
In the meantime, Obama's polling has fallen for the very first time to only 50% approval, nearly tied with the disapproval number (at 49%) and well within the margin of error. In other words, Obama is losing in the court of public opinion. I for one think his drop is due to the failure of the so called "Stimulus" bill to stop unemployment from increasing, as he promised it would, but still, he's not in a good spot. Regardless of the poll you like the most, it's clear he is dropping into difficult territory. With unemployment increasing still there are going to be a lot of angry voters to confront, come the midterm elections. Moreover, there is this little piece of news: the candidate-to-be Mitt Romney, a guy who never gets any TV or other MSM coverage, is now tied with the Won in Rasmussen’s polling. Unbelievable.
Who bets we see ongoing series of hit pieces in the NYT starting this weekend?
