The Palin question Obama does not want to answer
...Prediction--Liberals will not be calling her crazy this weekend, they will be trying to avoid the question and act like she does not exist. That happens sometimes when you nail them.Palin notes the inextricable link between controlling health care costs and getting spiralling medical malpractice insurance premiums under control, and quotes from a recent oped in The Washington Examiner by Texas Gov. Rick Perry discussing his state's success in lowering costs and expanding access by capping malpractice awards.
Palin also quotes extensively from research by Dr. Stuart Weinstein of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, including this graph:
”The medical liability crisis has had many unintended consequences, most notably a decrease in access to care in a growing number of states and an increase in healthcare costs. Access is affected as physicians move their practices to states with lower liability rates and change their practice patterns to reduce or eliminate high-risk services. When one considers that half of all neurosurgeons—as well as one third of all orthopedic surgeons, one third of all emergency physicians, and one third of all trauma surgeons—are sued each year, is it any wonder that 70 percent of emergency departments are at risk because they lack available on-call specialist coverage?”
She also quotes Weinstein's observations concerning the financial impact of medical malpractice costs on families:
"Excessive litigation and waste in the nation’s current tort system imposes an estimated yearly tort tax of $9,827 for a family of four and increases healthcare spending in the United States by $124 billion. How does this translate to individuals? The average obstetrician-gynecologist (OB-GYN) delivers 100 babies per year. If that OB-GYN must pay a medical liability premium of $200,000 each year (which is the rate in Florida), $2,000 of the delivery cost for each baby goes to pay the cost of the medical liability premium.”
Palin then asks Obama:
"So I have new questions for the president: Why no legal reform? Why continue to encourage defensive medicine that wastes billions of dollars and does nothing for the patients? Do you want health care reform to benefit trial attorneys or patients?"
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Imagine $2,000 for every baby born in Florida goes to protect the doctor and his associates from greedy trial lawyers. That does not count all the additional costs of deliveries caused by John Edwards' phantom conversations with babies. Yet, Democrats ignore this elephant in the room, because it would cut off their own cash flow from greedy trial lawyers.
Democrats are so craven. They lock poor kids in terrible schools because they are beholden to the teachers unions and they drive up the cost of health care because they are beholden to greedy trial lawyers.
BTW, I use the term "greedy trial lawyers" as a way of tweaking Democrats and my friends who are trial lawyers, because they are the first to use such pejoratives against the other side.
Since Texas passed tort reform, the state has had an influx of doctors making health care more available and affordable. Check out the link to Gov. Perry's op-ed above.
These really are some of the most ridicules numbers ever used. Do you actually believe that with 111 million families in America there is a yearly tort tax of 9,827/family. Med mal is a very small part of the whole system, well behind Executive salaries, overhead and processing costs. United Health care claimed they could save multi billions just with paperwork changes. The Bush/Rove days of bashing the lawyers should be over. Let's do something that is actually helpful for the consumer.
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