Tort reform. Little original content.

[jazzfish]

Scare tactics [by way of the incomparable Rivka ages ago] is probably the best of the articles I've found; it's got a decent chunk of linkery going on as well. One of those links goes to the Snopes page on tortuous torts, which itself contains a link to a description of the much-touted McDonalds coffee case.

On the medical side, rain_luong's got a Bob Herbert editorial from June, Sadly, No! pokes holes in Judson Cox, and Jesse "No Relation" Taylor of Pandagon does the same to today's Moonie Times article. And of course lots of doctors who have problems with malpractice insurance aren't the most reliable practitioners of medicine. To quote Kevin Drum again, "maybe ambulance chasing lawyers aren't the biggest cause of malpractice suits after all. Maybe malpractice is. Just sayin." Update: and, in a striking case of finding my own bloody links instead of scraping them from other people's blogs, the Charleston Gazette ran an interesting series of articles on malpractice back in early 2001.

Which isn't to say that there aren't frivolous lawsuits. I seem to recall Fox News launching one against Al Franken last summer. But, like the Fox News lawsuit, or the case of the kid who tried to get a Harrier jet out of Pepsi, most of these cases are dismissed quickly.

The first person to use the words jacuzzi cases will be treated in the same fashion as the first person to say first and fourth most liberal senators or voted against the $87 billion to fund troops in Iraq [follow the link, then do a find-in-page for 87 billion] in my presence. I'll even say "please" and "thank you."

Comments

[jonny-law.livejournal.com]

1. When you arrive at the emergency room with your bone poking through your skin, are you really going to stop to ask to see your doctor's credentials? Also, HMO phone banks with scripted people not disclosing they have no training beyond following a dialogue tree.

Simply put, it is a tax on people's time to do the necessary research to "shop around" for the best doctor. If you want to spend more time shopping around for the best doctor, if you can spend more time shopping around for the best doctor, you're probably already in a pretty secure position, health-care-wise and class-wise. Also, actually understanding that research undoubtedly favors the better educated, and we all know what education correlates with.

2. Hospitals have trouble maintaining enough specialists to staff an emergency room as it is. Do you want more specialists being paid to be on-call? Or maybe higher-paid multi-specialists. You know who will pay for that.

Also, back before doctors were graded on patients-per-minute, they could actually look up a patient's history to see if any patterns emerge beyond the symptoms of the day. Further dividing health into specialties will disincentivise that kind of overview, if deregulating education doesn't.

Finally, unless we create that scary liability-free medical care, the doctrine of defensive medicine means you will spend the whole day seeing 10 doctors for 5 minutes each to get a check-up.

8. Killing the FDA is already underway, just like killing the IRS. (Right now it's being increasingly funded by fees charged to drug makers.) Like any most attempts to reduce "waste," ie. regulation that protects Small Citizen, this will allow violators to get away with more and have little effect on the people already following the rule of law. See also, doctor certification.

Most drugs are produced by small pharm companies, where one unsuccessful drug will shut it down, say one that is promising up until it's injected into a human at the last phase of testing and is unexpectedly inactive. This will just delay their acquisition by GlaxoWellcome-SmithKlineBeecham-Pfizer until after the drug has proven safe.

Drug companies are run by investors who want to see a good rate of return. Xerox-, Enron-, and Worldcom-style events are rare, but when they happen they are Big. Wasn't one phthalidomide enough?

9. I can't shake the feeling that "waste" is any service that I don't need to use right at this moment.

10, also 1. Price =/= Quality.

12. Hypochondriacs rejoice. I just read this pamphlet about Conservatism, so let me lecture you about something you've been studying for years or decades. Also, let tell you what your deeply-held beliefs are.

13. One of my new mottos is "Social Conformity is a small price to pay for Universal Health Care." This is one point where I agree with Nixon.