This has not decreased malpractice rates or doctors bills. It is a bunch of BS. The insurance companies are still charging through the ying yang. Mandatory auto insurance (prop 213) was supposed to do the same thing. Well the only thing it did was create a windfall for the insurance companies. The exact same thing happened with workers comp reform.

The only people that got screwed were ordinary people like you and me. The corporate lobby and insurance lobby did well for themselves.

In the end corporate greed is going to win out every time unless unchecked. The recent mortgage debacle – ceo pay joke – etc. should show you what happens with unregulated market.

I am not looking at this issue through the blinders of a political party although it may seem like I am. I am looking at the reality of the situation.

Tort reform = ordinary people getting screwed out of their legal right to sue and wrongfully protects a class of persons who intentionally or negligently cause harm to others. (YOU)

Tort reform only gives the insurance companies more profit. OPEN YOUR EYES.

Norm

What is more important to you, rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, or healthcare for our own people?

Norm

Tort reform solving this problem is a myth. We already have it in many States.

Read my article, under ERISA health insurance providers have a federal exemption from being sued for failing to provide coverage. Imagine that! Did you know that!

Anytime you hear tort reform, what you are really hearing is that your individual right to sue is being taken away or limited to protect a certain class of citizens.

Look for my upcoming article on the myth of tort reform being a solution.

Norm

The cost of the Iraq war alone would have paid for health care insurance for all Americans for 10 years or more.

After you read my article, tell me what you think.

Norm

The way the health care reform act is shaping up I will have to cancel my health insurance because I won’t be able to afford the taxes on it. Yet I work 12-14 hour days with no overtime pay.

Health care is an enormously complex industry. To enable repairs to a broken system the people working to fix it must understand it. The state of the healthcare system is symptomatic to our overall society. Understanding the causes of the current state of the system will reveal starting points in which to affect repairs. In essence, we must understand what factors makes healthcare so expensive in this country.
A high school graduate entering college with the goal of becoming a Doctor of Medicine can expect to spend about $400,000 for their education through medical school. Then add another 3-8 years for internship and 2-6 years for residency. Add lab fees, books, facility fees, sports fees, computer fees, computer lab fees, living expenses, food, clothes, and so on. The cost to train a high school graduate to become a doctor can approach $1 million. Assuming that the typical student does not have a golden goose this is a considerable amount of debt to pay. This in turn increases their individual cost of doing business. They must earn enough money to repay the student loans and provide for living expenses. To earn their money they must seek a minimum amount of compensation in addition to benefits. This cost is deducted from the revenue stream. In order to afford employment of this professional the business must charge enough to cover the DoctorÂ’s wages in addition to the facility expenses. As these expenses increase so must the cost to the customer.
Why is this education so expensive? Colleges and universities can afford to expend tens of millions of dollars on sports programs. The same principal applies here as well. It cost the university $N per student to educate them. This figure is influenced by personnel, program, & capital expenses. As either of these rise so to must the expense to the customer (student). This has led many universities to diversify their revenue streams to include additional taxes, and medical, research, and retail facilities. Reducing the expense to educate Doctors would naturally reduce the impact on healthcare these factors contribute.
Tort reform is one such way to reducing cost to the system. Most Doctors carry malpractice insurance of some form either individually or through a group. This insurance costs money. You are probably well, even intimately, familiar with how risk impacts costs. The malpractice insurance costs are weighted on the risk of exorbitant malpractice awards increase. Attorneys that work on a contingent fee basis have a vested interest in seeking maximum awards. These cost increases are passed on to the consumer with increased medical care costs. People see tort reform as a way to cut these costs. I see two avenues of tort reform that Congress will not ever pursue. The first is to eliminate contingency fees to eliminate the vested interest in maximum awards. The second is to have the loser pay. This reduces the frivolous legal actions. People will think long and hard about pursing legal action.

These are just two examples of factors into the healthcare equation. IÂ’ll leave it to you to research other factors contributing to the expense of healthcare. Consider the impacts of factors such as: emergency room abuse, cost to bring medication to market, cost to bring new technology to market, cost to staff a hospital, minimum wage laws, and associated legal costs.

Why is it that people we trust the least make the most while people we trust with our children make the least?

Those taxes that I pay now are not saved up for my use at some point in the future. They are paid out to cover those who do not have coverage in the present whether they are temporarily or professionally unemployed. The gamble the government takes is that I will remain employed to pay payroll taxes.

NORM>>
What is more important to you, rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, or healthcare for our own people?

If it were me there would be no troops at any overseas locations.

Mandatory health insurance – especially with a public option which (a) keeps the insurance companies a little more honest and (b) serves as the baseline care level for those who cannot afford the more expensive plans – works. Yes, there is waiting time involved. I had a bit of a health scare earlier this year and the referral from my personal doctor to the specialist unit at the local hospital took a few weeks, but as we’re not talking about an immediately life-threatening condition this wasn’t a major deal. People tend to forget or gloss over the fact that these waiting times usually for specialist diagnosis or treatment.

I can usually see my doctor the same day or at least one of his colleagues at the same clinic and if the condition warrants urgent care that is beyond what the local clinic can provide, they will refer me to the emergency room at the local hospital. Again, I might have to wait a few hours there while they deal with more urgent cases, but then again do I really have to complain about waiting times while they’re, say, saving the life of a fellow biker?

Yes, I might be uncomfortable and think that I deserve care right now and the rest of the world be damned, but if I think that this is the case then I can always open my wallet and pay extra for the promise of improved or faster care. But the point is that my basic health insurance needs are paid for out of a separate tax so I don’t wake up one morning and find myself totally without cover. Said tax is dependent on my income (same as German health insurance premiums are or at least used to be) and this removes one of the biggest problems I see with the free-market-screw-you approach. The free market approach makes health care costs regressive so those who are the poorest suffer the most because they have to cough up a much larger percentage of their incomes for health insurance if it is not provided by their employers. So chances are they’ll have to go without as it’s the same story with food and rent.

Yes, sometimes the centralised, public system is sub-optimal. A neighbour of mine (who was in his 80s) died while waiting for a second hip replacement – the waiting list was 18 months. That is clearly not good, but OTOH the hip wasn’t connected to the cause of his death either. Given that he had driven a truck for most of his life and certainly wouldn’t have been able to pay for private health insurance out of his meagre pension income, the fact that he got health care and that he got one hip replaced is still worth mentioning.

One issue that the more centralised system here in the UK has (expensive equipment is only available in hospitals) seems to have the main downside that it deprives doctors of quickly earned side income of the “oh, we better have some X-rays just in case” type. In Germany, where it at least was a lot more common for doctors to have that sort of equipment at hand, the health insurance tends to have to pay out for a lot of unnecessary “just in case” type additional diagnosis. My old lady’s experience in the US suggests that the same mentality can be found there as well, probably even worse because the risk of a malpractise suit tends to be higher in the US. Plus, it keeps the doctors in boats and Porsches and their mistresses in fur coats.

Looking at it from the outside, the trouble is that any sort of improved health care will have to include either some sort of public option or a mandated minimum coverage for a minimum amount of money (much like a minimum wage) in order to provide health insurance to those who simply cannot afford it at the time being. I’m pretty sure both are intensely disliked by insurance companies as they’ll easily highlight where a large amount of the premiums went and how cheaply basic care can be provided if enough people are paying into the insurance fund. Especially if the insurance fund works more on a mutual basis and only with a limited profit margin. So they crank up the lobby machine to convince people that systems that work in other countries would spell the end of civilisation, apple pie and all that if they would be implemented in the US.

Tell that to the biker who sleeps on a park bench because he got knocked off his bike, didn’t even have minimal health insurance and lost everything as a result.