Democrats & Liberals: Archives

Great take, AP. This issue is making me sick. This is just another indication that the Bush administration is completely willing to forego concern for people in favor of concern for business while posturing as if they are fighting for all Americans. They resort to hand-waving tactics to make their case, the same as the Social Security “crisis,” but rarely produce real facts. Hopefully this “plan” will just fail like the others have.

OK, I am really confused. While I am a left leaning weenie, why in the world do all doctors seem to favor this Bush policy? Are they not smart enough to see through it? Don’t they realize that it’s the insurance companies that are ripping them off? I have two MDs in my family and they are both adament on the subject. What’s up with the disconnect?

Call me greedy, but can’t we have both? Tort reform of some sort needs to happen - even John Edwards admitted that - and Congress should debate what the new guidelines look like. But can’t we also have insurance reform for dessert? I’d like to have my tort and eat it too!

(On a side note, this really should be a state issue, except pertaining to tort cases in Federal courts. I hope the Supreme Court keeps the legislators inside their constitutional limits. The constitution was designed so that each state could have what it wants. California tries insurance reform, Texas or Illinois or something could try tort reform, and the rest of us will watch who does better and imitate them)

AP

1000% increase in profits for the insurance industry?

Please tell me which companies are involved so that I can quickly invest.

When I checked with my online broker, I found that the insurance sector went up by 10.2% last year. This is respectable but was just BELOW the S&P 500 average of 10.9%. My broker must be holding out on me.

The drug companies actually lost 12.5% last year, so I am not sure what to do. I am desperately seeking these profiteering firms, without success.

So - anyway - your financial advice would be appreciated. We can all benefit. Buying a firm that increases its profits by 1000% would let us all retire comfortably. We wouldn’t even need Social Security.

Excellent post AP. You’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s another giveaway.

Texas just did tort reform and guess what? None of the insurance companies rolled back their rates!!! Surprise! Now the embarrassed Governor is entangled in litigation to force rollbacks. It’s also forcing lawyers to raise suit costs by requiring class action status to go after companies like Merck, which also delays lawsuit resolution another 4 years or so. The people with relatively small claims now simply have to eat it.

I agree that far too many people sue doctors. But I also note that doctors do not self regulate and fail to remove bad doctors. I believe a possible solution here may be the british loser pays system.

Insurance companies often pay off bad claims as nuisance and help to create their own problems. I think health malpractice should possibly be persued as criminal conduct. While that might restrict experimentation it would help eliminate quackery.

Jack, if you review companies like Merck over time they have outperformed the S&P quite healthily. I never bought Merck, but considered it several times. It was a bit pricey for me.

And there were drug companies that did increase 1000 fold, not blue chips, however. Genome companies come to mind, as well as some generic start ups.

Greg

My point is that we are greatly exaggerating the obscene profits firms make.

One of the reasons Dems fear personal investment accounts is that it will make a larger number of people owners of stock. As you become more sophisticated and have a personal stake in understanding business, you become less susceptible to anti-business propaganda.

I used to feel the same way about obscene profits and I know many people have felt the same way. But when I started to look into the subject in detail, I found a much more complicated picture. You mention you thought of buying Merck, but found it pricey. What does that mean? It means that you thought that buying the stock was not the best investment you could make. In the case of Merck, if you bought the stock on this day last year, you are poorer today because you did.

If you (or anyone else) truly believe a firm makes very, very high profits, you can buy it. The fact that everyone is not rushing to buy these companies indicates that the people who know about these things don’t think they are or will make above average incomes.

As for small firms that make fantastic returns, that is because of risk. If you buy a startup firm, there is a very good chance you will lose all your money. People who don’t understand business look at the very profitable company and question why the investors deserve such profits. Of course, they forget that maybe nine out of ten such investments paid nothing. That is another thing actually investing your own money teaches you.

The cost of insurance and the cost of defensive medicine are two of the reasons health care is so expensive in the U.S. They are not the only reason, but they are very important.

What is more, the liability issue gets in the way of good medicine and doesn’t protect victims. Lawyers are generally looking for a settlement for their clients. They are only too happy to let the offending doctors continue to practice, if they get their payoff. Lawyers resist efforts to make doctors accountable in any way except the payoff. A few doctors are responsible for many of the mistakes. The best strategy would be to identify them. Many lawsuits are settled with no admission of guilt, sometimes secretly. This is not helpful, but it lets the lawyer continue to rake in the big bucks.

If you want to look at obscene profits, consider the lawyers.

“One of the reasons Dems fear personal investment accounts is that it will make a larger number of people owners of stock. As you become more sophisticated and have a personal stake in understanding business, you become less susceptible to anti-business propaganda.”

Thats a bit of a jump there. I would say most dems are extremly pro-business. As someone who has run a small business, worked only for small business, and has a small, but important to me ;-), stock portfolio; I love to see businesses do well.

That being said, I dont think anything in this debate has to do with anti-business propanganda. Its about logic. Its about finding the source of the problem and fixing that. As Greg pointed out, limiting the payouts insurance companies have to make wont make them lower their rates, it will only increase their profits. If a business has a chance to make MORE money doing the SAME thing, they would insane not too.

The right to redress for wrongs committed or damages done is fundamental to Due Process.

Due Process is a gurantee of the United States Constitution.

Which, of course, is why the Conservatives are trying to destroy it.

Frivolous suits comprise a vanishingly small percentage of those which reach full adjudication, let alone judgment. Most are thrown out of court on pretrial motions. There are many State Laws in force to protect and deter from frivolous actions. Jury-Awards are another matter. Large jury awards are fully in keeping with the Law Of The Land: a Jury sits in Judgment and delivers its decision based upon the amount of Harm or Wrongdoing they perceive. Whereas any judge has the right to reduce any jury award, they are loathe to do so because it violates the basic mechanism set down to allow relief - as determined by The People.

*MOST* of the costs associated with both Malpractise Insurance *AND* Medical Fees come from Insurance Companies and HMO’s: without the overhead of Middleman Money and tons of Paperwork, costs for every procedure and therapy could be capped at a reasonable level (so as to allow a profit for the operators), and the final cost to the patient (or government) would be far below what it is today. The present state of health care here in Barberica is a shock to any civilised country in the world, and the shame of a once-mighty nation.

One of the reasons Dems fear personal investment accounts is that it will make a larger number of people owners of stock.

Yikes. That is just plain ridiculous.

Of course it’s not a desert. The desert is filled with sand! But that’s where the oil is AP, and if the oil is there we have to send our soldiers to die for Bush.

…Whoa… sorry, my tin foil hat came off there for a few seconds. It’s back on now. I’m ok.

This issue is really about campaign finance reform. The single largest contributors to the Democratic party are trial lawyers. Why wouldn’t we expect them to oppose this? Do as I say but not as I do.

If punitive judgements that go far beyond recompense for whatever damage they have cuased is required to punish companies that have done wrong, let’s set a standard by which the lawyers are not compensated with a percentage of that award.

Lawyers seem to be the only business that is exempt from liberal hatred on account of ‘windfall profits’.

As for insurance companies, yes they are an integral part of why healthcare is high— not because of greed per se, but because there are too many third party payers in health care.

The customer needs to be placed back into the middle of the equation.

Tort reform is needed at all levels. If you follow this issue case by case you will find that there are egregious cases where the plaintiff can never be adequately compensated. But you can bet the lawyers will. You will find many cases that should never have been allowed in court or thrown out. Totally frivolous. That judges don’t toss them is beyond me. In most case where there is class action, only the laywers profit. The individual gets scratch.
At least California has made some changes. There are some cases that ought to be reviewed and the laywers and plaintif made to pay back. It is a morass of greed. It entangles the meritorious cases (asbestos is an example). Lawyers’s fees should be subject to challenge. It is a mess and to jump on the insurance companies or a few bad doctors or dumb corporate entities is not solving the problem. The solution has to be in the world of jurisprudence. How are you going to do that? Start by pounding away at the state legislatures. They have a hammer…state law. You have a hammer…votes.

I gotta agree with Chops. We can have the tort and eat it, too.

I thought Edwards’ idea for a review board and penalties for lawyers who bring frivolous charges to court was a pretty good way to reduce the already small number of such claims.

Again, malpractice payouts constitute one-half of one percent of healthcare costs. Defensive medicine may (or may not) be a significant factor. Nobody knows, because nobody admits it.

But modernizing billing and accounting procedures could reduce healthcare costs for consumers by HALF, which I guarantee would dwarf savings (if any) from capping payouts for legitimate as well as frivolous lawsuits.

Same goes for making doctor’s malpractice records public and breaking up collusion between insurers.

We can have both. Bush’s plan doesn’t give us either.

Eric-
Get your priorities straight. Are the doctors properly policing their own, preventing serial malpracticers from continuing their harmful behavior? Try them first. They raise rates for everybody.

Then try the Insurance companies. Are the anti-competitive practices properly regulated, so they aren’t charging high margins for insufficient coverage that they don’t even fully honor? If it’s the insurance companies simply overcharging because they can, then tort reform isn’t only useless, it’s a bad joke.

Then try the HMOs, with their corporate bureacratic interference that hamstrings doctors. My mother, an adminstrative assistant for doctors at Methodist and UTMB told me that when she was working there in the early to mid 90’s, a doctor would actually have to readmit a patient to the hospital to change a diagnosis. things haven’t gotten better over time.

Then go after the trial lawyers. Hold them accountable for their frivolous lawsuits. Stop them at the source. Don’t go writing laws that punish people bringing legitimate cases to bear. Besides, won’t the lawyers bringing the cases simply bring more cases to make up for the lost money?

The whole purpose of having a tort system is to exact a price from those who engage in misdeeds that while not criminal constitute a breach of a person’s rights or a contracted agreement. If you cap damages, the richer folks and corporations will not change their behavior, and simply treat the lawsuits as a cost of doing business. The point, though, is to make these things hurt. What the jury and judge decide should not be restrained by your draconian regulations.

Answer me this, Eric: why is it that your people only regulate to cover these people’s butts? Whose side is the Republican party on, when it comes to regulation?

Actually Jack, 1000 fold is an exageration, but please don’t try to convince me that drug companies and doctors are by any means going broke. I work in engineering and their before taxes profits generally run in the 40-60% range. They avoid a lot of taxes through lease back deals. I suspect that doctors, drug producers run in the same range. Their books show smaller profits for tax purposes. The insiders make killings through stock options and other perks.

I am not against profits, just obscene profiteering and then crying,”were going broke”. Would it’ve have been cost effective for airlines to add air marshalls to their flight crews prior to 911? They chose to be cheap and risk travelers lives by negotiating with highjackers. I knew hardened cockpits would help when I was 12 in the 60’s and the Cuba highjacks were rampant. 7-11’s profited by setting up minimum wage employees in 24 hour stores that are now known as stop and rob’s. In Bhopal India, Dow bought their way ought of their mass killing through a corrupt government. They should have gone to jail. I’m sick of these corporations whining they can’t get by. What a losd of crap. CEO’s don’t deserve 1000 fold salaries over their employee’s. It’s little more than legalized extortion.

Movie stars make obscene amounts becase of the mass marketing of a relatively cheap product. You don’t have to participate if you don’t like it. Large corporations make obscene amounts usually because they restrict the market. They sue, undercut, or lobby others out of their business. They dominate markets and do not participate in free markets. Water is the new privatization market. It is immoral, in my opinon, to give it away to Corporate pirates. But that is what our lovely “free market” zombies are doing.

The problem isn’t really tort reform. That’s another greedy industry trying to further restrict intrusions into their sloppy business practices. Tort reform doesn’t stop profiteering. Look at where it’s been done. I have no problem with punishing frivilous lawsuits, but most lawsuits aren’t.

Greg

Just on a tangential issue, I think developing a market for water is a great idea. This is not to make a profit (although as you know, I have no trouble with profit) but rather as conservation measure. Currently, there is little incentive not to waste water and the market, such as it is, is insane.

I grew up along the shores of the great lakes. These are the largest bodies of fresh water in the world. My sister in law lives in Phoenix. Which is one of the hottest and driest inhabited parts of the U.S. Yet residential water bills in Milwaukee for my family, on the shores of Lake Michigan where it seems to rain a lot, were higher than water bills for my sister in law sitting under the cactuses in Phoenix because of distortions caused by archaic government subsidies. This is wrong.

It harms the environment and cost a fortune. It is just that the users don’t pay, so they are happy to water their yards and golf courses.

Wow, Jack. Then I guess you’d also feel it was unfair for the victim of a drug company’s faulty product to receive a pittance in compensation, while the drug company continues on with business as usual.

Welcome aboard the free-market express, Jack! Where companies who develop faulty products and hide the risks and side effects get sued out of business, while the good companies prosper.

We should be free to choose the doctors that aren’t screw-ups. Modernizing billing and accounting for healthcare providers was a Republican idea that Democrats liked enough to steal - like welfare reform.

How come the GOP isn’t authoring a bill that gives us all these free choice and free market ideas? Why are they shoving this claim-capping regulation BS at us? And why would any conservative defend it?

Well, I don’t know about where you grew up, but I remember my aunt’s in Northern Indiana in the sixties. The lake reeked so bad it was gross. The beach was littered with dead fish. Taxpayers cleaned it up. Want to bet who paid the largest share? I bet it wasn’t the steel mills or the barge owners.

Law suites do not work the way they are advertised. Supposedly, they hold the guilty accountable and that is supposed to make them more responsible. In fact, the approach simply adds to unpredictability and provokes increasingly bureaucratic and risk spreading behavior. This is not limited to medicine, but since that is our subject, lets look at it.

Medicine is by nature risky and experimental. Nobody gets out of this world alive and there are usually recriminations when anybody slips this mortal coil in an untimely fashion. Especially in the more experimental (and lifesaving) kinds of medicine, there are disagreements about what it best and trade offs. Even something as simple and well established as aspirin has harmful side effects.

There is also an economic and moral dilemma. How much is enough? A person complains of a headache. The doctor tells him to take two aspirin and call in the morning. It turns out to be something very serious that could have been detected with an expensive test. Is the doctor culpable? Thousands of people have a simple headache. Should you test them all? Of course not. But the one who is misdiagnosed sees it as malpractice.

So how do lawsuits fit into this dynamic?

First, lawsuits do not punish bad doctors. Most of the time any settlements are paid by insurance and they are paid out of court. You can’t really tell if the doctor made a mistake that caused a bad result, if the bad result was beyond his control or even if there was a bad result at all. The only thing you can see is that the doctor’s insurance company paid a claim. How does a logical person protect himself? By making sure all the possible tests are done, even those that make little or no sense. In addition, he seeks to spread the blame through consultations with others.

Second, lawsuits are kind of a nuclear option. Payouts can be so high as to be ruinous. A reasonable person protects himself against reasonable risk. Most drivers put on their seat belts; most homeowners have fire insurance. But people don’t plan for catastrophic events such as war or comet strikes because they can’t conceive of how they can prepare. A doctor is left in a similar situation. The patient has a headache. A wrong step could break him financially. Better avoid any contact with anything too dangerous. That is why so many doctors will no longer deliver babies. Too many things can go wrong.

One of the most effective ways to reduce death and injury has been workman’s compensation. I am sure you are familiar with how it works. It is essentially “no fault” with predetermined payouts (kind of a cap). The amounts are not enough and the system is criticized for putting a price (and a low one) on human suffering. Yet it has worked precisely for that reason. Businesses saw an expense that they could reduce and a way they could plan for a safer workplace. If you are reasonably certain that doing something will cost you x money but save y, you can plan accordingly. Lawsuits are uncertain. You may be able to get away with something entirely and pay nothing even you are guilty. On the other hand, you may get stuck with a crippling expense even if you are innocent. This is the kind of system were the worst rise to the top and work to game the system by avoiding responsibility. This is the system we have today. Ironically, a capped system would encourage better behavior all around, while reducing costs of making and keeping people healthy.

Greg

You make the point about water.

The steel mills and barge owners considered the water a free good. They did not have to pay the true costs of using it or making it unusable.

Make them pay per liter and they will be more careful how and what they use. A market solution to the water problem is not a gift to business. On the contrary, it makes everyone pay more of the true cost for what they do to the environment.

stephen,

Answer me this, Eric: why is it that your people only regulate to cover these people’s butts? Whose side is the Republican party on, when it comes to regulation?

I have no idea what you’re talking about. I should think you would be glad that Republicans are talking about regulating an industry that is rife with abuse.

I’m for regulation that makes sense. I am against regulation based soley on anti-capitalist rhetoric. Profit is not a valid reason to regulate.

I’m not against valid lawsuits against people who are at fault or who negligently caused the death or great bodily injury of someone else. But can you say that there needs to be no regulation of these lawsuits?

About 70 percent of Maryland’s obstetricians and gynecologists have been sued at least once, with the average settlement exceeding $1 million, a study shows.

Let’s say 70% of all gas stations in your state had been sued, and the average settlement was over $1 million dollars. Wouldn’t that a) put some out of business and b) raise the cost of gas station operation?

Are all these doctors all just bad doctors? Or is it more likely that what happened might have been worse without a doctor? I think what makes Healthcare a little different from any other profession in terms of liability is that you rarely see a doctor unless something is wrong. We are all gauranteed to get sick, to get hurt, and ultimately to die. Without healthcare minor sicknesses or wounds can be fatal. And unless a doctor was truly negligent they should not be deluged with lawsuits just because the payoff for the attorney and plaintiff is a big one.

Let’s be honest. Isn’t for profit healthcare the real villain here in liberal eyes? Hospitals and Insurance companies only care about profit, right. They’re so tainted by the search for filthy lucre that they don’t care if people die? Isn’t that why we must have honest, diligent, hard working fighters for the people in the form of trial lawyers, ready, willing, and able to step forward and fight for the rights of individuals against the corporate monster?

I’m sure that once the Democratic party is finally able to nationalize the healthcare system that people will stop dying at hospitals.

The point, though, is to make these things hurt. What the jury and judge decide should not be restrained by your draconian regulations.

I don’t think you read what I wrote at all.

If punitive judgements that go far beyond recompense for whatever damage they have caused is required to punish companies that have done wrong, let’s set a standard by which the lawyers are not compensated with a percentage of that award.

I’m not a lawyer but I believe punative damages are in addition to whatever compensation the victim gets. It’s sole purpose is to punish. I am all for that in cases where it’s warranted. But perhaps it should be excluded from contingency fees. Trial lawyers may just be filing hundreds of cases hoping to hit paydirt with just one.

Eric, I watched Cspan this morning and heard a guy who lived in Europe for a few years praise their healthcare system. He found it far superior to ours. They have longerlifespans than we do. Nationalized healthcare would be far mor ethical I believe.

I now know the faults of our healthcare system first hand. I had a heartattack over the Christmas holiday. I called 911 and was rushed to the hospital where I was in intensive care for 5 days. My treatment was excellent. I had just taken a job the week previous with a company I had worked for in the eighties. My previous employer had dropped his healthcare. Even thhough I was not informed of a delay in aquiring insurance, I was told ( after my hospitalization) my new insurance would not start until January 1st.

I do not not know the cost of my hospital stay yet but I am sure it will be enormous. As a New Year’s present my employer fired me on the 3 rd of January after giving me the runaround on my insurance. They have yet to give me cause. Now I am scrambling to find employment and cannot afford the drugs I am supposed to take.

My previous employer, angry because I would not falsify a document for him, stole approximately $2500 from me.

I had lost substantial money a year before in a partnership that turned sour.

I can sue these guys, sure, if I live long enough. Tell me, Eric, what is ethical or even remotely fair about this? Where is the regulator I turn to? I am only 47. This is reality for some of us. I suppose you can blame me for not being clairvoyent or making poor business choices. That’s easier than dealing with the failings of America’s healthcare sytem. You can write it off as a fluke, but I guarantee you it isn’t.

Somehow if an earthquake destroyed your home and business, you wouldn’t turn away governmental disaster aid. Healthcare can be equally catastrophic.

Good article and responses AP.

I also agree with captainozone - it is completely unconstitutional for the federal government to ever attempt to interfere with our right to due process, or with the decisions of a jury.
This is yet another example that Dubya and Co. simply don’t have a proper respect for the Constitution and are intent on systematically destroying it.

AP,
You state more than once that,

But modernizing billing and accounting procedures could reduce healthcare costs for consumers by HALF, which I guarantee would dwarf savings (if any) from capping payouts for legitimate as well as frivolous lawsuits.

Please let us know where you get this information. I am not saying that I disagree with you only that I would like to research the subject further.

Stephen,

Answer me this, Eric: why is it that your people only regulate to cover these people’s butts? Whose side is the Republican party on, when it comes to regulation?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with an injured party being compensated for their injuries. However, many jury awards have gotten totally out of hand. If the injury is caused by a doctor’s intentional actions or his purposefull disregard for the well being of the patient then as far as I am concerned he should be sued into the poor house.

My problem is with doctors who make mistakes, not something intentional. You see, regardless of how well trained ar educated a doctor is, he is still a human being. That means that at some point he will make a mistake. So, do we punish him by suing him for millions? What happens when you make a mistake on your job? Does your employer come after you for several years worth of your salary?

Greg,

Insurance companies often pay off bad claims as nuisance and help to create their own problems.

You are right about one thing, insurance companies often do pay off bad claims. However, they do not do it in order to get rid of a nuisance, they do it because it is much cheaper. Insurance companies can settle 20 bad claims at $1 mill each for the cost of loosing a court battle wherein a crafty trial lawyer plays on the sympathy of jurors clouding the facts of the case.

Below is a portion of an MSNBC story
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3660696/site/newsweek/

While doctors win most malpractice cases that go to trial, their insurers lose often enough to want to settle many claims. (In California recently, a couple won a $70 million judgment against Stanford University Hospital and two other health-care centers for failing to prevent their child from becoming disabled by a rare birth condition.) Sometimes, the malpractice is egregious. But then there are cases that, in an earlier era, would have been dismissed as the patient’s own fault. Take the pending lawsuit by a 29-year-old drug addict who sued a Pennsylvania mental hospital for failing to prevent her from overdosing on drugs and cutting herself. The hospital should have warned visitors against bringing drugs into the hospital, the lawsuit claimed. The staff should have noticed that —a visitor had sneaked some heroin and cocaine to her. The hospital’s job, her lawyers claim, was to protect her from herself.

No wonder, according to one estimate, doctors waste $50 billion to $100 billion on “defensive medicine” to prove that they left no stone unturned, no test untried, no medication unprescribed, no specialist unconsulted. That kind of money could buy health insurance for the 40 million Americans who have none.

Medical-malpractice claims don’t even do what they’re supposed to do—compensate victims and deter future mistakes. Various studies have found that the vast majority of medical errors go undetected by patients and that nine out of 10 are never compensated. (And when patients do sue, their malpractice allegations are unfounded in as many as 80 percent of the cases, other studies suggest; insurance companies pay to settle the vast majority of claims anyway, rather than risk a big hit.)

Limiting punitive damages, (not compensatory damages) will discourage lawyers from taking questionable cases for the chance of winning the litigation lottery. Limits would also encourage doctors and insurance companies to challenge questionable cases rather than simply settling them to avoid a possible huge jury award.

I can hear the clamor now for my use of a quote from the evil Newt Gingrich but he has a very good and workable idea to limit abuse of the legal system and control excessive jury awards. So, here goes.

http://cgood.org/learn-reading-cgpubs-opeds-34.html

Courts should provide reasonable recourse to patients who have suffered due to malpractice. But they also should defend doctors who have acted professionally against the root of their problem: lawyers. To do this, we need a new system of medical justice.

One solution is to let medical experts decide malpractice cases. We already have specialized courts, such as patent courts and family courts, which deal with custody issues. A few states have courts that focus on mental-health and treatment issues. Their goals are to divert mentally ill misdemeanor offenders to treatment programs rather than jail when appropriate. Similarly, in states with drug courts, judgments are based on medical considerations, not just legal ones.

In a health-court system, judges with medical expertise could objectively determine whether legitimate malpractice has occurred. Trial lawyers would not be able to manipulate the emotions of qualified and knowledgeable judges, as they now do with jurors. Doctors who have not acted improperly could be confident that judges who understand complex health issues would decide their cases. Patients who are dissatisfied with the outcomes in a health court could take their cases to a civil court, but they would have to present the findings of the health court to a civil jury.