Tort Reform: The Most Needed Feature of a New Health Care Bill

One of the largest expenses patients pay when they go to a doctor is the added on fee to pay the doctor’s malpractice insurance. The direct costs of medical malpractice insurance is $30 billion yearly; and that does not include the $240 billion yearly that doctors and hospitals spend ordering useless laboratory tests “just to rule out” highly unlikely possible diagnoses so they will be free of litigation liability. This wasteful type of practice takes place to a very large extent in emergency rooms where the doctor is unlikely to ever see the patient again. So…rather than planning to see the patient, again, to check on how the problem is resolving or progressing, as a primary care physician can, he just orders more and more lab tests.
For an example of how much malpractice insurance money is passed on to the patient, consider this: It is estimated that for every baby delivered by an obstetrician, the patient is charged $1000 to pay for the doctor’s malpractice insurance.
Buried in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 1,990-page bill is a provision that provides "incentive payments" to each state that develops an "alternative medical liability law" that encourages "fair resolution" of disputes and "maintains access to affordable liability insurance." Sounds encouraging. Read on, however, and you come to this nugget: The state only qualifies if its new law "does not limit attorneys' fees or impose caps on damages."
Believe me, those “alternative medical liability laws” will only work if caps are imposed on attorneys’ fees.
To read more about the traps that exist in the new health care reform laws, I refer you to http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574441193211542788.html.

What Caused the Ft. Hood Tragedy? The Obvious!

How long will our opinion gurus in the media and in the government continue to brain wash us about the innocence of Islam in the causation of national and international terror. The murderer at Ft. Hood is a Muslim; and as he shot down 13 American soldiers and wounded 29 others, he shouted the Muslim war cry, “God is good!” Could it be that his Islamic religion had something to do with his actions??!! Our government and other politically correct leaders continue to seek some esoteric reason for his homicidal mania, e.g., worries about his imminent transfer to Iraq. If that were true, it seems strange to me that more soldiers do not go about killing their fellows when they get the news that they are about to deploy.
The Army Chief of Staff, General George Casey, Jr. had this to say when he was interviewed ABC’s George Stephanopolous. “This terrible event would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty.” Evidently, General Casey values diversity even more than the lives of his soldiers!! I suppose that General Casey has a point: We apparently need diverse attitudes and behaviors in the U.S. military, such things as murderous attitudes and terroristic events aimed at killing and maiming our military personnel.
How crazy can we get?! This thing was caused by Major Hasan’s Islamic religion. To read more about this I refer you to: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574525831785724114.html