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I believe so. I think they already have enough votes when the time comes.
Not if I have anything to say about it!
Health care reform is NOT what is needed . . . Tort reform IS!
Just my not-so-humble opinion. B)
Tort reform would save us about 2-10 billion dollars a year. Not exactly chump change, but relative to the health care deficit and economic problem it's posing us, that's sort of like throwing a speck of dust at the wall and pretending it will go shatter at our audacity. The long term cost curve isn't being driven by lawsuits and "frivolous" testing (a huge percentage of actual health care is frivolous relative to its benefits, forget the testing, it's the actual procedures and drugs that are usually a waste of money). If it's that important to you, go right ahead and pass that tort bill, and I don't think people will object too much. But you should be aware it probably won't amount to much of anything meaningful.
(in my opinion we should continue to let tort reform occur on the state level as it already has been rather than messing with the federal level, because it's not even clear what "reform" would be needed and helpful in that arena, in such a way that it would benefit doctors AND patients by opening up the market for health care and getting as few lawyers involved as are needed. All a federal tort reform bill would do is mess up the potential for something meaningful to emerge at a lower level of government).
So, what you are saying is that you would rather spend TRILLIONS on a government run healthcare system rather than save BILLIONS with tort reform?
Where is the logic in that?
FYI – What states are instituting tort reform? I haven't seen any at all in the last 50 years. Lawyers, and I do mean those out of control lawyers, are the problem. You can see their ads each and every day on the TV promising to sue for ANYTHING. Oh, and BTW, Obama and most of the U.S. Congress ARE lawyers!
I said nothing about what my own preference was for health care (see: Singapore, not Obama). So no. That's not what I said. I said tort reform is a canard "Reforming the tort system would help," said Conrad. "But the Congressional Budget Office tells us it's pretty modest – $50 billion over 10 years – when we're going to be spending $30 trillion over that period of time." In addition to not being a significant driver of cost inflation, it's also putting people, patients, at risk and the idea that it's commonly abused by out of control lawyers is fairly ridiculous. Mostly because the number of such lawsuits has remained pretty constant over the last decade (meaning their frequency has been reduced), all while states and federal politicians try to restrict this further. Meanwhile there's something like 100k people who die from medically preventable illnesses (often while insured) because the doctors screwed up. More to the point, the caps and limits method of tort reform has done absolutely nothing about the cost of medical malpractice insurance or the frivolousness of tests being ordered (that requires better coordinated care to get rid of wasteful spending on the part of doctors "defensive medicine" is also a canard).
Which then is worse? That people die because the doctors don't wash their hands or that people sue over it?
There are 32 states with medical malpractice tort reform limits. All of these happened in the last 50 years. Texas and Illinois are the two most well-known.
The only talking point that might be a good idea in the GOP playbook for health care is HSAs, which I have one myself and find perfectly valid. I'm reasonably supportive of letting insurers compete across state lines, but most of the arguments for this sort of deny that there exist different rules in different states for other types of insurance. So even that is rather poor, though not as bad as some. (The "we must defend medicare from cuts" rallying cry of Republicans is even more offensive than the "we need tort reform and that will solve everything" cry).
This, as you attempt to point out, does not imply that I find the Democratic playbook any better on health care reform. I think their attempt at "reform" is a joke. Employer provided health care benefits need to disappear. Tomorrow. Poof. And defending this absurd practice, along with attacking HSAs, are the two key selling points of the Democratic plan. You may then imagine that I am not much of a fan of it if its two major points are diametrically opposed to my own ideas.