The problems with our system—problems left completely unaddressed by Obamacare—are the roulette-like aspects of our tort law, under which thousands of plaintiffs’ lawyers are already racing to attract any and all claims from anyone who thinks they may have taken Avandia and thinks their particular problem is related to it.  There are no barriers to entry to the courts

Has this guy never heard of an independent medical exam?

Christ on a cracker.  You have to get one of those for a dang whiplash suit.

Don’t worry!  Obama, in the hopes of getting David Broder to pat him on the head but no Republican votes, look to be moving to doing tort reform.  Its such a great idea!  Piss off a huge Democratic base group while transferring wealth from the poor to the rich (which is what “tort reform” is, taking away my legal rights and transferring them to corporations with out compensation).  That’s Change We Can Believe In!

“The optimal system, apparently, is to let drug companies make drugs that injure tens of thousands of people, hope they’re very, very nice about giving those victims whatever the drug company can afford, and be very happy that you have that great pill <strike>for your back pain that also makes you cough up blood</strike> that makes your dick hard.”

Fixed That For You…

(BTW, I’m pretty sure my racist dad would vote for Tyrone Johnson, just as long as he wasn’t married to a white woman…)

Again, advocates of tort reform do not argue that the injured should not be compensated.

No, advocates of “tort reform” just want to make sure that large corporate legal departments should only face a mass of small indvidual lawsuits for any alleged malfeasance, which can be bought off or swatted away depending on the expertise and skill and public profile of plaintiff’s counsel.

Is there any corporate salad that Hewitt and his fellow-travellers won’t toss? Real people are dying, but heaven forfend anyone try to scratch a corporate entity. I’ll bet he’s also a fan of Blackwater (or whatever they’ve re-branded themselves as).

The saddest thing about this piece is that he goes once more to the bone-dry well that is the home to the former boogeyman known as the “Evil Trial Lawyer.” Even people who dislike lawyers can’t get very worked up about that conservative political cliche anymore.

Is there any corporate salad that Hewitt and his fellow-travellers won’t toss?

Right wingers like him are just bullies.  That’s all there is to it.  They’ll engage in disingenuous lip smacking about how they don’t hate victims of misfortune, but that’s only to give them cover to kick people while they’re down.

Man, if only there were some sort of rules relating to civil lawsuits that allowed judges to dismiss suits quickly and with prejudice and to severely sanction lawyers who bring frivolous lawsuits.

Not exactly.  You linked to the federal laws on this subject and state laws, AFAIK, may differ.

In particular, my mom once was sued (in the state of California).  If she did not respond within a certain time frame, it would have been considered that the Plaintiff won (even though the lawsuit was frivolous ... well, actually worse than frivolous) and my mom would have had to pay.

Of course the case was dropped (as soon as my mom’s insurance company put their lawyers on the case) and even if we would have had Joe Shmoe representing my mom, the case would have been dismissed pretty quickly, but it would still have been a cost for my mom in terms of time (and possibly money) to defend herself against a frivolous case.

Enough people have been sued frivolously that “the courts are broken ... it’s too easy to sue” has immense traction.  Of course, “tort reform” does nothing to prevent these sorts of frivolous lawsuits.  So this is the classic GOP bait and switch—use people’s anger at problem X to get them to support “solution” Y, even though Y doesn’t solve X, it’s close enough that people angry about X will support Y, even though Y not only doesn’t solve X but also serves to help powerful interests cause further problems for Jane and Joe Sixpack.

The problem we liberals have is that too often we deny the problem in the first place, which makes us seem out of touch.  Better we should acknowledge the problem and be able to demonstrate to people how our ideology solves the actual problems at hand and how the GOP is using bait and switch to get people to support an agenda contrary to their interests.

“Again, advocates of tort reform do not argue that the injured should not be compensated.”

that’s not what they “argue” but it is absolutely what they want.  that, and they want the civil courts to be the place where corporations resolve their contract and patent lawsuits without having to be bothered by the dirty masses - who belong in criminal court anyway (and why can’t we skip criminal trials and just send them to prison? they wouldn’t be here if they weren’t guilty, right?).

the peddlers of “tort reform” have been so successful at maintaining an utterly false impression that americans are too litigious, plaintiffs’ lawyers are too greedy, and the civil justice system is splitting at the seams. the most common example is the infamous mcdonalds case where a woman sued for millions of dollars for a $1 cup of coffee that she supposedly spilled in her lap because of her own negligence. the “tort reformers” always omit the enormously high temp of the coffee, the direct link between the damages sought and mcdonalds’ sales of coffee for that one day, and that mcdonalds was specifically warned about the risk of burns and chose to ignore it.

while Jesse only mentions the federal rules as they relate to prompt dismissal, judgment modification, and sanctions for improper lawsuits, state courts have nearly the same rules and there’s the whole field of malicious prosecution as well. and let’s not forget that the supreme court has put strict limits on “excessive” punitive damage awards.

not to mention this built-in assumption that lawyers are taking these cases oblivious to the economics of litigation. prosecuting a claim against a pharmaceutical company costs several thousand dollars per plaintiff, and the pharmas have no shortage of lawyers or legal tools to jack up the costs for the plaintiffs.

You know, those damn juries once awarded a woman millions of dollars for spilling coffee on her lap!

Of course, the coffee was “too hot”, as in over 200°, the McDonald’s had been cited by the Health Dept. 3 times previously for having the coffee be “too hot”, and the woman suffered 3rd degree burns over her private areas, and the punitive damage award was equal to one day’s profit for the mega corp, but it just goes to show you that we should just trust corporations to do the right thing b/c juries are CA-RAYZEEEE!

Anecdata:

My brother was on a malpractice jury a year or two ago in Connecticut. The plaintiff was the family of a man who had some kind of heart condition. They alleged that the cardiologist chose a course of treatment that was ineffective in preventing the man’s death.

My brother and his jury peers ruled for the defense. He told me that, at least to him, the case came down to this: the doctor had two reasonable options for treatment. He could have chosen the other one, and there’s a fairly decent chance it would have had a better outcome. But that’s only speculative, and the treatment he did choose was reasonable under the circumstances.

So the plaintiff may have made the case that the cardiologist’s choice resulted in the patient’s death, and that a different choice might have resulted in the patient’s survival. Tragic, but it doesn’t constitute malpractice.

Sure, it sucks that the physician (or his insurer) had to defend this suit. And yes, it’s sad that this man died under circumstances that might have played out more favorably. But no, malpractice comes down not observing standards of care and that was simply not in play in this case.

It’s just one example, but I do think the image of malpractice law as being some kind of big fun lottery for anyone who doesn’t do well with medical treatment is more propaganda than fact.

Right wingers like him are just bullies.

Worse than bullies—they’re toadies, the sort of betas who kick a bully’s victim after he’s down.

Catfood, my husband was on a jury that dismissed a malpractice suit against a doctor.  The suit was spurious anyway - the guy in question had smoked for 60 years and was dying of COPD, likely within a year anyway.  The doctor was accused of prescribing too much of a treatment drug, but it turns out the hospital had released the guy with clear instructions for medication which the patient’s wife was unable to properly follow, at least according to her recollection.

What they should have sued for: they should have sued the hospital for releasing somebody that sick with that complicated a treatment plan to the care of an elderly and functionally illiterate spouse.

Not exactly.  You linked to the federal laws on this subject and state laws, AFAIK, may differ.

Most state rules of procedure are modeled after the federal rules - not to mention that GSK is almost certainly going to try to push for removal to federal court in any case filed against it.

Ms Kate:  The hospital is not who should have been sued in that case.  It should have been the insurance company who I’m sure was refusing payment for any more than X number of days in hospital.  Insurance companies routinely force discharge of patients with complicated treatment plans that family and/or friends (if you’re a lucky patient) then have to follow for you.

Shorter Hugh Hewitt: You should have every right to sue, except you shouldn’t.

Jesse, I had a horrible Developmental Bio exam this morning, but the image of you and Mr. Tyrone Johnson in a rocketcar blowing past tumbleweeds is going to going to get me through the rest of the day.

Here’s what I think they really object to:  multi-millions of dollars of punitive damages going to someone as a result of a lawsuit rather than as a result of working at a job.  They think medical malpractice suits and civil lawsuits against drug companies are just big lottery drawings where an “undeserving poor person” (read that however you want) gets handed millions because they were lucky enough to get hurt by a big corporation or a doctor with access to a big insurance policy.  They look at these big damages awards as a moral hazard for customers and ambulance-chasers rather than as an incentive (maybe the only one, in a free market) to keep corporations honest with regards to product safety.  They’re thinking about the guy from Office Space, who was a lousy worker with a stupid idea but was set up for life because he got seriously hurt.  “Good things happen, just look at me!”

They may be right; but that doesn’t mean that the solution is to cap awards.  That may solve the moral hazard problem for the customer but it then opens the moral hazard door for the corporation, who now has less incentive to emphasize product safety.  The Hugh Hewitt solution is to “let the market handle that” because people will stop buying products that are found to be unsafe; but that market force only works after people get hurt, potentially many people, and maybe even involving people getting killed.  I’m sure people quit buying Thalidomide after the birth defects problem became known, but wouldn’t it have been nice to not have had all those birth defects in the first place?  That solution is not acceptable; awards should only be capped if there are also corresponding non-monetary penalties such as actual jail time put in place, or maybe some other solution (such as capping how much an individual gets but keeping the multi-million dollar damages awards intact and directing the surplus into an aftercare system for all victims of defective products) could be set up that preserves the deterrent effect.  Also, if someone’s life is completely ruined by a defective product, why shouldn’t they be allowed to win the lottery?

Quoth Hew Hughitt:

As the hard left edge of the Senate Democrats debate making a run at single payor, ask yourself exactly what that will do to prevent the costs described above from rolling through the system.  The answer is nothing.

And as the hard right edge of Senate Republicans debate how to derail that same effort, ask yourself exactly what that will do along the same lines.  I bet you’ll get the same answer; because both efforts have nothing to do with product safety. 

The “problems with our system…left completely unaddressed by Obamacare” are also left completely unaddressed WITHOUT Obamacare.  So this is really all just a bunch of meaningless smoke being blown around to obscure the true issue and try to generate opposition to health care reform.  We mustn’t vote for the Obama proposals because they don’t fix every problem!  Wow, what a wonderful argument:  unless a piece of legislation fixes everything, we should vote against it!  And I bet if we try to come up with legislation that does fix everything, we should also vote against it because then it’s too complicated!  Heads you win, tails I lose!  Thanks Hew Hughitt, I’m so glad we have geniuses like yourself to advise us on the wisest course:  doing nothing.

I think liberalrob has it. I’m going to insist that my representative and senators vote against the defense budget because it does not fix the civil court system. And that dumbass law in Utah criminalizing miscarriages: doesn’t fix the civil court system either.

But really, one of the things shown to reduce lawsuits for medical malpractice: health care systems where having suffered a grave medical mishap doesn’t make you “uninsurable” and thus unable to get further care.

This illustrates my theory that conservatives do not work. (That’s how they’re able to listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, et al. all day every day. Liberals have jobs.) Because what is on daytime TV? Lawyers looking for injured victims. People with mesothelioma, for example. People who took some pill with massive side effects. People who can turn their structured settlement into Cash! Right! Now. This excites a horrible envy in the hearts of unemployed conservatives who feel they too, need cash right now.

And what else? is on, exciting envy? Old obese people boasting of how Medicare got them a free scooter. Nothing will grind a conservative’s gums more deeply than thinking of some old obese diabetic zooming around Walmart on his Rascal from The Scooter Store. For free!

...the image of you and Mr. Tyrone Johnson in a rocketcar blowing past tumbleweeds is going to going to get me through the rest of the day.

Yes, it is rocket-powered…but is it monkey-navigated?  /Simpsons

How about actually enforcing stricter testing on drugs before they’re released?

“Nothing will grind a conservative’s gums more deeply than thinking of some old obese diabetic zooming around Walmart on his Rascal from The Scooter Store. For free!”

Considering most of them are white and vote solid Republican come hell or high water, the Rethugs probably think it’s a small price to pay…

i believe this system was tried before in the US:

“The optimal system, apparently, is to let drug companies make drugs that injure tens of thousands of people, hope they’re very, very nice about giving those victims whatever the drug company can afford, and be very happy that you have that great pill for your back pain that also makes you cough up blood.  It’s the cost of health, friends. “

as it turns out, it apparently didn’t work very well, resulting the creation of the FDA, and the concept of class-action suits. as well, most drug research in this country is actually funded by the government, meaning us, the taxpayer, not the pharma companies.

my bet is, if you looked at glaxo’s form 10-k (annual financial statement filed with the SEC), they spend more on lobbying and marketing, than on R & D.

How about actually enforcing stricter testing on drugs before they’re released?

Indeed.  But you see, doing that requires government regulations and a bureaucracy to monitor compliance and enforce violations of same, which costs taxpayer money and is subject to the whims of whoever is in power (meaning DFHs, as under conservative rule there would be lax enforcement and deregulation, QED).  Not to mention the onus on companies to expend resources on compliance and testing, which gets passed along to the customer.  It’s all so wasteful when you could just let the Invisible Hand take care of everything for free.  Well, except for the people who get hurt along the way.  But as Jesse said, that’s just the cost of doing business.

Hector b @20
yep, its no accident that Limbaugh, who had his choice of time slots, picked mid-day weekdays

Personally, I wish these sorts of medical torts were more like the recommendations studies, looking at the total number of people helped and their otherwise risk.  Maybe the chance of heart attack was slightly greater but the chance of something else was reduced far more.

Certainly, if they’re liable, they should pay out.  But our system encourages blind ignorance over informed consent.

DAS @6: Perhaps the reason that liberals ‘don’t acknowledge the problem’ is that no such problem exists, and your post is zero evidence that it does.

What you’re describing about your mom is not a wacky kink of the California court system. If you file a lawsuit against somebody, properly serve them with the papers, and they ignore it, you can obtain a “default judgment”. Then you still have to go to court and have what is called a “prove up” hearing, to show a judge that, now that you won, you are actually entitled to the amount of money you say you are. So if you bump my car, I sue you for a million dollars, and you ignore it so I get a default judgment, I don’t get a million dollars. I have to go prove to a judge that I deserve money from you and how much.

Hewitt is telling the truth, if by “the injured” you mean “people like Hewitt and his fellow travelers”. They’re more than happy to file lawsuits when somebody looks at them funny - here in California, the head of a “tort reform” group filed a class-action lawsuit against a municipality that gave him a parking ticket he admittedly deserved. They just don’t want Joe Sixpack irritating his betters and sullying the courts with his swinish, lower-class presence.

Ain’t it the truth, speedbudget. We just sat down and figured out how much coverage it would take for me to spend a week visiting my parents, when I’m the primary caregiver for my FIL, who has liver cancer. The answer involves 24-hour PCA coverage, at least part time from an LPN, and several visits to or from an OT and a PT. Mind you, other than two overnight stays for observation post-chemo, he’s had no hospital care, no at home nursing care, and no OT or PT - his insurance doesn’t cover any of that right now. If he gets much worse, they’ll consider a PT - except that by that time he’ll probably have so much muscle wasting it won’t do him much good. If I didn’t have a solid medical background (PCA, research assistant, ran a pharmacology lab, etc.), I’d be way over my head, instead of treading water hard. If it were my MIL trying to care for him, he’d probably be dead by now. Come to think of it - maybe that’s what the insurance company has in mind. He’s surely an expensive drag, as far as they’re concerned, and he’s a poor bet for a cure, so why not let his poor beleagured family off him by accident?

My brother and his jury peers ruled for the defense. He told me that, at least to him, the case came down to this: the doctor had two reasonable options for treatment. He could have chosen the other one, and there’s a fairly decent chance it would have had a better outcome. But that’s only speculative, and the treatment he did choose was reasonable under the circumstances.

This is the crux of 90% of malpractice suits.  A doctor makes a choice between multiple valid options that any medical school in America would deem as sane.  The doctor then loses the battle and the patient dies.  The family angry that the doctor didn’t choose the “right” option sues.  But closing the ability to sue or capping the reward is just bad for everybody. 

This argument doesn’t apply to drug makers though because they’re working in the realm of biology and chemistry.  The complexity of drugs far outpaces my college-level understanding of chemistry (go go Chem-1 & 2) but when you know your drug has a higher than normal chance of causing a secondary reaction and possibly heart failure you need to go back to the drawing board or face the consequences.  Tort is designed by definition to not reward the victim but punish the perpetrator.  It doesn’t matter who wins the case just as long as the people who created the drug and marketed it are punished. 

I’m for tort reform that allows the government and private public health agencies exact payment from these companies for their failings.  But to just cap the system and cut off a valid route of consolation is silly.

Well, no, Xeranar, that’s not ‘the crux of 90% of malpractice suits’. All you’ve done is regurgitate the “tort reformers” argument in prettier language - the poor, hardworking doctors can’t work miracles and then angry laymen who don’t know any better want to punish the poor things! If that were the crux of even 50% of malpractice suits, there would BE NO MALPRACTICE SUITS, because the lawyers would go out of business.

Here’s a piece by a guy who actually does medical malpractice cases. I realize that this is yet another instance of lies running around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on.

Speaking of barriers to the court system, how many people here would know how to hire someone to bring a malpractice lawsuit, let alone afford it?