Band-Aid on open heart surgery

Tort "reform" is one of the Republican's favorite health reform. But of course it's not really a health reform. Its purpose is to allow large corporations to escape financial responsibility for their actions.

You thought it was about doctors and nurses!? Don't be naive.

You thought it was about saving you money? Step away from the Kool-Aid!

Malpractice litigation costs about $20 per person per year. The cost problem that America faces relative to our economic competitors among the western democracies is more like $4000 per person per year. If we're serious about cost containment, malpractice costs - 0.5% - are waaay too low to matter. At all.

None of this $20 per year would return to consumers in the form of lower prices. Pricing of a $12,000 annual premium is just not sensitive to a $20 difference. For a buck and a half a month, you're going to shop on coverage features, right? The whole $5.4 billion per year would go right where the Republicans intend it to go: to the corporate bottom lines of medical and insurance corporations.

Furthermore, given how many preventable deaths and injuries are caused by medical errors, more litigation, not less, looks like a goad to more efficient allocation of medical resources. If we had a more effective means of preventing these errors, I'd be all for it, and sure enough computerization of records is in the current bills both for bureaucratic and medical efficiency, but meanwhile it would be bad policy to remove all punitive accountability for medical errors.

Republicans disagree. This is because they really believe in government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation.

Reform tort reform?

John Perr at Crooks and Liars does a great job of calling bullshit on Republican claims about tort reform.

[L]argely overlooked in the heated discussions of damage award caps, special health courts, expert panels and national compensation schedules is the inescapable truth that the medical malpractice system has only a negligible impact on overall American health care costs.

Nah, I don't think Republican tort reform can be reformed. It needs to be euthanized.

What Republicans care about

It sho' ain't health care reform. It's not even cost containment.

Republicans care about immunizing medical providers - and especially their insurance carriers - against the suffering they cause when they injure or kill patients. That's what so-called tort reform is about, not about doing justice or saving money.

Don't believe me?

The CBO says that a ceiling on damages would save $54 billion. Not annually, though, over ten years. That savings would accrue to over 300 million Americans. If you average the savings, it amounts to $18 per person per year. That's very roughly one part in four hundred (a quarter of a percent) of what we as a nation spend on health care.

Don't know about you, but I'm willing to part with an Andrew Jackson a year to retain the right to sue someone whose negligence might sentence me to life on a morphine pump.

Of course, the savings wouldn't be averaged, so I wouldn't even have to fork over an Andy. Ordinary Americans would see no savings whatsoever. Insurance company bottom lines, though? They would see nearly all of it.

Remember this every time you evaluate a Republican proposal. They don't care about you.

Remember also that CNN could have made this clear and once again failed utterly to be a useful media outlet.

Why call it 'care'?

With enough tort reform, we could all have "care" like this.

John McCain is not the only person who has lost his moral bearings. Our government builds systems with the plain intent of not giving a damn if they kill people.