Perspective

[Eddie Haskell]

For some 6 1/2 years, I've been railing back and forth with several members of this forum about lawyers, lawsuits, republicans, medical malpractice, etc. and thought it might be a good time to put a little perspective into these discussions. As many of you know, the insurance industry, corporate america, the chambers of commerce and the republican party have teamed up since the 1980's in a very successful public relations campaign convincing many Americans to vote against there interests and the long term interest of this country.

As many of you also know, the campaign of the current administration has been one of fear, God, patriotism, arrogance, etc. 9-11 was the best thing to ever happen to George Bush. He has used that event (and the people who died in those towers) to further the neo-conservative agenda put in place long before that terrorist act occurred. Bush has used fear and that event to really distract this country.

He has used 9-11 to rally Nascar nation around the flag utilizing the words God, freedom, terrorism, in all sound bites. He wears the flag on his lapel like he owns it and implies dissenters are traitors. He has turned the FDA into a rubber stamp machine for the pharmaceutical industry instead of the consumer protection agency it was designed to be.

Here is the perspective that I offer. Should we as Americans be diligent against terrorists? Of course. But how many Americans have died in terrorists attacks since 2000? The answer. Under 4000. Under 4000!!! How many Americans have died due to medical negligence since 2000. Conservative estimates are 50,000 per year. Thats 350,000 since Bush took office he wants the drug companies to unleash more and more drugs quicker and quicker into commerce without sufficent testing and checks.

http://www.cancure.org/medical_errors.htm

Again, Bush of course, will take credit and say that many lives have been saved because of his efforts in Iraq blah blah blah. Just more scare tactics. Frankly, your odds of dying are about 100 times greater when you go see Dr. Jones for that check up or take that Lipitor from Walgreens than if you board that AA flight to New York with that guy who looks like his name is Omar. But remember, Dr. Jones is a Bush ranger and Phizer sent the RNC millions while Omar didn't.

Just a little perspective. Why doesn't Bush talk about the problem that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans? Nope, he'd rather keep us scared and spend billions on a war for oil than improving a health care system that buries its mistakes.

Eddie

 

[WhatsHisNuts]

Eddie: I was just thinking about how you really haven't had much to say lately....I think this takes care of that. Good post.

 

[auspice2]

I would comment, but as everyone knows, we're the same person.

 

[Eddie Haskell]

Thanks GM:

You guys have been doing a nice job of thrashing Wayne, Weasel and the rest of the Hitler youth. Have been enjoying yours, Sauls, Spys and Sponges posts.

Ed

 

[The Sponge]

Sometimes it just seems so hopeless. I mean you see how easily people get fooled right here inside the site. There are times i just want to walk away from this fight but the anger just reappears. When you have half a nation voting these thieves in im not sure how you can stop it.
Im not to sure what you mean about using fear. Do you mean something like this? President George W. Bush is trying to scare us. On July 24, 2007, at Charleston Air Force Base, Bush mentioned al Qaeda 93 times in a 29-minute speech.
This is stuff even a child should be able to see.:shrug: This has nothing to do about right or left. Its our country and people should put the best person forward no matter what party it is. To sit there and applaud this thieving party is insanity. To hear some people talk about voting for Bush because they could see him drinking a beer with them is insane. This spoon fed mother clucker wouldn't give them the time of day. Its stunning. People just don't give a shit and then you got the group that is so naive and get played a fool time and time again it just makes you want to give up.

 

[auspice2]

Eddie, since we are the same person, next time you go to the doctor, could you ask him why your (our) balls are sweating so much lately. Thanks.

 

[Cie]

Sometimes it just seems so hopeless. I mean you see how easily people get fooled right here inside the site. There are times i just want to walk away from this fight but the anger just reappears. When you have half a nation voting these thieves in im not sure how you can stop it.
Im not to sure what you mean about using fear. Do you mean something like this? President George W. Bush is trying to scare us. On July 24, 2007, at Charleston Air Force Base, Bush mentioned al Qaeda 93 times in a 29-minute speech.
This is stuff even a child should be able to see.:shrug: This has nothing to do about right or left. Its our country and people should put the best person forward no matter what party it is. To sit there and applaud this thieving party is insanity. To hear some people talk about voting for Bush because they could see him drinking a beer with them is insane. This spoon fed mother clucker wouldn't give them the time of day. Its stunning. People just don't give a shit and then you got the group that is so naive and get played a fool time and time again it just makes you want to give up.

The problem w/ individiduals like yourself is you think only republican leaders are self-serving thieves. Once we all catch on to the fact that vast majority of these people, dems and reps alike, are infected by the lust for power, then we may begin to make wiser decisions at the polls as a country.

 

[SixFive]

I agree with a portion of your post about the FDA and the whole pharma industry in general being corrupt.


I'd like to see some reciprocity between the USA and other countries with drugs (especially those being used with success everywhere but here).

There's also a lot to alternative medicine.

Eddie, have you been a part of some of the class action drug lawsuits? I see a new one everyday it seems like. Ketek was on the other day. gl

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

By whose conservative estimate Edward--and how many millions of operations is this comprised of?
Whats the ratio's in other countries--and pray tell how does your capitalizing on misfortunes of others solve the problem and what is cost on americans to line your pockets---

March 27, 2007
The Cost of the Tort System
This estimates that "America's tort system imposes ... an annual "tort tax" of $9,827 on a family of four." That's approximately $2,457 per person:

The Tort Tax, by Lawrence J. Mcquillan and Hovannes Abramyan, Commentary, WSJ: Economists have long understood that America's tort system acts as a serious drag on our nation's economy. Although many excellent studies have been conducted, no single work has fully captured the true total costs, both static and dynamic, of excessive litigation.

The good news: We now have some reliable figures. The bad news: The costs are far higher than anyone imagined. Based on our estimates, and applying the best available scholarly research, we believe America's tort system imposes a total cost on the U.S. economy of $865 billion per year. This constitutes an annual "tort tax" of $9,827 on a family of four. ...

How does the legal system extract such an astounding amount from our economy? We applied the rent-seeking theory of transfers from economic science to pick up where past studies -- including the highly regarded Tillinghast-Towers Perrin study -- leave off. We began by examining the static costs of litigation -- including annual damage awards, plaintiff attorneys' fees, defense costs, administrative costs and deadweight costs from torts such as product liability cases, medical malpractice litigation and class action lawsuits. The annual static costs, $328 billion per year, are well in excess of previous Tillinghast estimates.

But $328 billion is only the beginning. After all, litigation doesn't just transfer wealth, it also changes behavior, and often in economically unproductive ways. Any true estimate of the costs of America's tort system must also include these dynamic costs of litigation -- the impact on research and development spending, the costs of defensive medicine and the related rise in health-care spending and reduced access to health care, and the loss of output from deaths due to excess liability.

Consider the impact of medical liability concerns on the health-care sector. It is a well documented fact that the fear of litigation prompts doctors to engage in expensive defensive medicine..., which must be added to any comprehensive estimate of litigation costs.

At the margin, higher health-care costs also reduce access to care for patients. We estimate that the additional $124 billion in liability-based health care costs adds 3.4 million Americans to the rolls of the uninsured. Uninsured people are more likely to suffer from a number of diseases and serious or even fatal conditions. Economically, the result is that more Americans are absent from the workforce and their productivity declines -- a total loss of output we estimate to be $39 billion per year.

Excessive liability also hampers innovation. ... As liability costs increase, companies respond by shifting funds from research and development into fighting litigation and withholding or withdrawing products from the market. Less R&D spending means fewer new products and less innovation. ...

An overly expensive liability system also increases the cost of many risk-reducing products and services, at the expense of human lives. ... Our analysis ... estimate the human cost of a failure to enact reforms.

Based on data from previous studies, we determined that more than 77,000 people would have been alive today and contributing to the workforce, but are not because of a failure to enact comprehensive tort reforms in the states...

What we're left with, then, are annual dynamic costs of $537 billion resulting from our litigation system. Add that to the static costs of $328 billion and you arrive at the total of over $865 billion per year.

In this study we do not venture to propose a specific litigation-reform agenda. But we do provide all who are concerned with this issue some hard numbers to work with. And if you're wondering who the victims are of a tort system out of control, the answer today: almost everyone.

The tort law system and associated economics is not an area I know a lot about, but the opening sentence, "Economists have long understood that America's tort system acts as a serious drag on our nation's economy" brings up a question. What would the economy be like without a tort system at all? The tort system offers important protections and also offers the institutional structure needed to help capitalism function more efficiently (e.g. economic torts and competition law). I'm sure there are problems that could be fixed, i.e. eliminating the "excessive" part of litigation - as I said this is not a familiar area for me - but I find it hard to believe that the tort system itself imposes a serious drag on the economy or that most litigation can be classified as "excessive." If there was no system at all, I think we would be much worse off.

The authors say they are estimating "the true total costs of "excessive litigation." But it looks to me like they estimate the cost of all litigation, not just the excessive part, however excessive might be determined. That is, they assume that all costs are excessive in their estimates. Here's how the Council of Economic Advisors handled this in a 2002 paper (the CEA uses a much better methodology for estimating the costs as compared to the methodology outlined above and arrives at lower figures):

[R]ecognizing the controversy that exists about the incentive effects of tort liability in general, and punitive damages in particular, this paper will consider several scenarios. For our most cautious estimates of the size of the ?litigation tax,? we make the very strong assumption that both economic (e.g., loss of wages, medical expenses) and non- economic (e.g., pain and suffering, loss of consortium, punitive) damages are currently set at an optimal level. We then consider an intermediate case that treats non- economic damages as essentially random and therefore part of the litigation tax. Finally, we consider the case in which all of the costs of the U.S. tort system are treated as economically excessive, which would result if both economic and non-economic damages were largely random and failed to provide proper incentives

That brings up a second point. The article concludes by reminding us of the $865 billion dollar cost estimate. In a part I cut, there's an attempt to magnify this number by noting that "It is equivalent to the total annual output of all six New England states, or the yearly sales of the entire U.S. restaurant industry."

But as noted above, that's only around $2,457 per person. And there is no estimate whatsoever of the benefits from the legal protections offered by the tort system. Certainly there are some benefits, and I can easily imagine that if there were no legal protection at all that we would each incur costs higher than (likely too large estimate of) $2,457 as people took advantage of the lack of legal protection.

For these reasons, I don't think this tells us a whole lot about the net social value of the tort system. We don't know the cost of this system relative to an optimal system, e.g. if the optimal system costs $2,350 per person then the cost of the present system isn't so large, and we don't know the benefits of the present system relative to the optimal system or or relative to having no system at all (which would be optimal for some). It is also not as thorough as the CEA paper in covering the range of possible estimates due to variations in the assumptions about tax incidence, calculation of deadweight losses, the degree of excessive litigation, and so on. I don't mean to imply the CEA document is the final word, for example the EPI sees things quite differently ("[M]ost commonly alleged economic costs and impacts and ... have little or no basis in reality"), but it does appear to be on much firmer methodologically footing. But even it makes no attempt to estimate the benefits

 

[Eddie Haskell]

Wayne:

The gist of my post was medical mistakes being the 3rd largest cause of death in this country and how the administration keeps us focused on fear and terrorism which relatively speaking kills very few Americans and what do you do? Talk about malpractice suits.

Do you think less malpractice suits will save more patients? Do you think more malpractice suits will kill more patients? Or how about for once in your posting history STAY ON TOPIC. Which is, your asshole buddies administration is focusing his efforts and dollars in the wrong direction.

Instead of killing Iraqis how bout saving Americans with improved medical care, training and scrutiny of his pharma buddies. He'll never do it Wayne. corporate america first -- joe schmoe last. Bought and sold at its finest.

Guy is a criminal Wayne, through and through.

Eddie

Clint:

PS: I'm part of a multi district suit now (not a class action). Ironically involving a drug which causes compulsive gambling associated with Parkinsons Disease. By the way, stop giving me those red card things, your hurting my feelings.

 

[The Sponge]

The problem w/ individiduals like yourself is you think only republican leaders are self-serving thieves. Once we all catch on to the fact that vast majority of these people, dems and reps alike, are infected by the lust for power, then we may begin to make wiser decisions at the polls as a country.

No cous i call a spade a spade. The real problem is you jokers who put this fuk in office ought to own up to it. If people like you were not so easily conned and so uninformed we would have more that 4000 soldiers alive. Take some responsibility for your actions for once. The blood of these soldiers are on each and everyone of you guys that voted for these thieving pigs. Own up to it. If Gore was voted in we wouldn't be in Iraq wasting lives and a trillion dollars. You red staters put our country into this position so own up to it.

 

[SixFive]

Wayne:

The gist of my post was medical mistakes being the 3rd largest cause of death in this country and how the administration keeps us focused on fear and terrorism which relatively speaking kills very few Americans and what do you do? Talk about malpractice suits.

Do you think less malpractice suits will save more patients? Do you think more malpractice suits will kill more patients? Or how about for once in your posting history STAY ON TOPIC. Which is, your asshole buddies administration is focusing his efforts and dollars in the wrong direction.

Instead of killing Iraqis how bout saving Americans with improved medical care, training and scrutiny of his pharma buddies. He'll never do it Wayne. corporate america first -- joe schmoe last. Bought and sold at its finest.

Guy is a criminal Wayne, through and through.

Eddie

Clint:

PS: I'm part of a multi district suit now (not a class action). Ironically involving a drug which causes compulsive gambling associated with Parkinsons Disease. By the way, stop giving me those red card things, your hurting my feelings.

I don't remember giving you one?? :shrug: Not recently at least. Sounds like an interesting suit. What drug is it? I'm sure I've given it many times. Lots of Parkinsons around here.

 

[Chadman]

Interesting analysis on Bush and Co. serving the interests of the pharmaceutical industry by reducing the effectiveness and credibility of the FDA in looking out for consumers. While, at the same time taking an extreme stand against large medical interests such as Medicare being allowed to shop around for better pricing for drugs for their participants under the guise of safety issues for American citizens.

It appears that our beloved President can shift his caring for our people based on many factors, eh? Or is it just one...personal interest and paying back those that helped that along?

 

[Cie]

Or is it just one...personal interest and paying back those that helped that along?

I feel this has been the standard in the white house since 1992, which is when I registered to vote as an 18 yo pup......

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

Interesting analysis on Bush and Co. serving the interests of the pharmaceutical industry by reducing the effectiveness and credibility of the FDA in looking out for consumers. While, at the same time taking an extreme stand against large medical interests such as Medicare being allowed to shop around for better pricing for drugs for their participants under the guise of safety issues for American citizens.

It appears that our beloved President can shift his caring for our people based on many factors, eh? Or is it just one...personal interest and paying back those that helped that along?

Appears the facts prove the opinions false-again
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2006/when_democrats_attack.html

 

[Chadman]

I can agree with that, Cie, although I certainly think this administration is far more involved with certain special interests than the previous couple were. I think we have to look strongly at campaign finance reforms before this will probably turn itself around - with either party. But this one is beyond reproach on this issue, and it doesn't really hide it or care, which is unique.

In your face politics, would be a good label.

 

[Eddie Haskell]

Chad:

Totally agree on the campaign finance issue. Gavernment can't negotiate drug pricing protecting high pharmaceutical costs to seniors. I guess thats compassionate conservatism at its finest. Protect those profits.

Clint, Mirapex.

Ed

 

[gardenweasel]

""Here is the perspective that I offer. Should we as Americans be diligent against terrorists? Of course. But how many Americans have died in terrorists attacks since 2000? The answer. Under 4000. Under 4000!!! How many Americans have died due to medical negligence since 2000. Conservative estimates are 50,000 per year. Thats 350,000 since Bush took office he wants the drug companies to unleash more and more drugs quicker and quicker into commerce without sufficent testing and checks.""

how many have died in car accidents?......how many have died because doctor`s are afraid to aggressively treat patients because of the fear of a lawsuit?.....

didn`t they have to pass a law so that doctors or just your average passerby could aid an injured person without fear of being sued?....


what a joke...

and again with bush?...like all this didn`t happen during the clinton administration?....

just another one of their giant leaps of faith..... that people can simultaneously be evil geniuses and complete morons......

a blood-sucking shyster lecturing us on the evils of corporate america?...this thread`s enough to make a freight train take a dirt road....

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

I like Eddies liberal thinking GW.

Wonder if his lemmings have considered that people in hospital just might have a higher mortality rate than healthy ones

I might ask this question to all common sense folks.

If you could cut your insurance premiums in half by signing waiver not to ever sue your Dr or hospital who would not do so--:shrug:

on a diff tangent of the loony left and litigation--put this in perspective--



Texas Parents Sue Governor, School District Over Moment of Silence
Wednesday, August 08, 2007

A Texas family is suing Gov. Rick Perry and a school district over a state-mandated moment of silence in schools, according to The Dallas Morning News.

David Wallace Croft and his wife, Shannon, of Carrollton, Texas, have three children at Rosemeade Elementary and argue that the moment of silence is unconstitutional and amounts to state-sanctioned school prayer.

 

[gardenweasel]

lawyers have a place...but these greedy s.o.b.`s are out of control...witness this alj that`s putting these poor korean dry cleaners through hell....

a reporter questioned why this lawsuit wasn`t thrown out by the judge....answer:the alj`s one of their own....you think your average joe could sue a dry cleaner for millions over a lost pair of pants?.....and if he could,it just further illustrates how badly broken the system is....

why is there no "loser pays" stipulation in the law to cut down on ridiculous lawsuits?.....

answer:the slip and fall lobby...


i wonder why the tax code can`t be changed/....simplified/.....why no tort reform?

answer:the slip and fall lobby...

why do you think that many poweful dems fought the john doe amendment protecting terrorist whistle blowers from frivilous lawsuits from groups like the aclu and c.a.i.r.?

answer:the slip and fall lobby

who do you trust more?...your doctor?....or some lawyer?....