July 19, 2004
Malpractice Reform—the real health care issue.
Medical Rants has really been on a roll lately on the malpractice Issue. Read this post and this post (especially the comments, particularly the last one) to get an understanding of why Dick Cheney blasted the Kerry/Edwards campaign today on malpractice reform.
The Democratic Party has long made an issue of health care, stating that the system is dysfunctional and needs to be reformed. Their prescripition for reform almost always provides for increasing the government's role in health care; the apotheosis would be the ill-fated Hillary-care socialized medicine scheme in 1994. However, they never manage to bring up tort reform, which is sesperately needed.
In states such as West Virginia and Florida, it has reached crisis proportions. Stefan Sharkansky has blogged about the problems here in Washington State (although many of the probems here were due to the incompetence of the former insurance commissioner, who wants to be the next Attorney General, G-d help us). In many states, Florida and Washington among them, it becoming increasingly difficult to get insurance, as companies are folding or pulling out of the state because they cannot survive the hyoer-litigious climates caused by out-of-control lawyers.
posted on July 19, 2004 05:10 PM
