Opinions & Editorials: Non Profits
Here’s What is Stopping Tort Reform
James Copland, The Manhattan Institute
10.19.09
(Washington Examiner) 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 system.
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 litigation is too small a piece of the health-care puzzle to make much difference.
Obama’s Malpractice Lip Service
Washington Times Editorial
09.16.09
An exceedingly brief discussion of “malpractice reform” was the only noteworthy bone President Obama threw to Republicans in his health care speech Wednesday night. It wasn’t a serious offer of reform.
Reformers in both parties want to curb abusive lawsuits that drive medical costs through the roof. Yet Mr. Obama could not even bring himself to say that any suits are abusive, but merely that doctors are for some reason practicing “defensive medicine [that] may be contributing to unnecessary costs.” To help pacify them, the best he could offer was to “direct” Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius to “authorize demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues.”
The Plaintiffs vs. The Boards
Steve Hantler
08.30.09
The greatest risk is that just as businesses struggle to bring back jobs, our strength will be sapped by a new wave of lawsuits. The plaintiffs’ bar has spent tens of millions of dollars to win a majority of state houses across America. Now the plaintiffs’ bar is preparing to invest millions more in political campaigns, advertising, and lobbying to deepen their political influence and win dramatically expanded liability laws.
The Trial Lawyers’ Earmark: Using Medicare to Finance the Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous
Edwin Meese, III and Hans A. von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation
08.31.09
In one of the starkest examples of how plaintiffs’ lawyers want to use Congress to get rich at the expense of the American taxpayer, an amendment that would have generated abusive Medicare litigation on a massive scale—along with the usual huge attorneys’ fees—was recently added to the health care reform bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.[1] The current Medicare statute simply ensures that Medicare is reimbursed for the medical benefits it pays when a third party is legally responsible for a Medicare beneficiary’s injuries or medical costs.
