Tort reform must be a part of health care reform
I have closely monitored all the rhetoric on both sides of the health care/insurance issue. Because of the huge costs involved, there is much anger on both sides, while both sides are accusing each other of not knowing what is actually in the 1018 page bill.
One huge item that is not mentioned in the proposed legislation is tort reform. I do hear the insurance companies getting blamed for much of the cost that is currently in health care. I hear them getting blamed for not covering pre-existing conditions as well as certain treatments that have not been sufficiently tested. I am a senior citizen on Medicare and Social Security; but I worked for nearly 50 years, always paying into Social Security and into Medicare for as long as it has been mandatory.
There was a time when health insurance was not nearly as expensive as it has become. The premiums started taking quantum leaps when unscrupulous lawyers began working their black magic on bleeding heart juries, getting them to award huge, undue amounts to individuals who, while deserving of justice, were granted exorbitant amounts to settle their claims.
Many insurance companies paid for unjust claims out of court, just to avoid the possibility of a much higher amount awarded by a jury. Then doctors started to order many tests that were not necessary, just to cover their backside. These, and many other questionable costs have given rise to higher insurance premiums, both for the care givers and for those receiving care.
As for not covering pre-existing conditions, an insurance policy, reduced to its most simple form, is a bet between the insurance company and the insured that the insured will not contract some disease or injury that requires professional medical care. That being said, how can the insurance company bet on something not happening…that has already happened? If our wonderful congress would just take some useful steps toward tort reform, insurance rates would come down, more people could afford it, and, best of all, government could stay out of it. The unscrupulous lawyers won’t like this, but they should not be unscrupulous.
Charles Koetting
Valley Park
–Great question Charles! It makes me wish I had thought of it.
–Don’t expect any real answers from our liberals though. Just a lot of distortions, and misrepresentations of the facts.
Charles,
Great Post!!
” If our wonderful congress would just take some useful steps toward tort reform, insurance rates would come down, more people could afford it, and, best of all, government could stay out of it.”
Charles,
Missouri has had tort reform since 2005; many other states have inacted tort refore as well. Has anyone’s health insurance premiums gone down as a result? Anywhere? Anyone? Anyone?
Tort reform is another straw man. Have you looked at profits of Health Insurers lately? If they’re saving money, it’s not being passed onto the consumer. This is why there needs to be competition.
“This is why there needs to be competition.”-jellio
–?. Careful jellio, are you already drunk? Competition is just what the bill means to trample. You may be in danger of losing your lib-card with that comment.
Jelloio:
“Missouri has had tort reform since 2005; many other states have inacted tort refore as well. Has anyone’s health insurance premiums gone down as a result? Anywhere? Anyone? Anyone?”
Have they increased less rapidly in tort reform states?
“Tort reform is another straw man. Have you looked at profits of Health Insurers lately? If they’re saving money, it’s not being passed onto the consumer. This is why there needs to be competition.”
I have been getting excellent investment advice from Edward Jones for more than 10 years, and not once in that time have they suggested including an insurance company in my portfolio. Are they missing a sure thing or is it that you don’t know what you are talking about, still?
Iconspastic Stooge,
I’d fire Edward Jones,
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/united-healthcare-profit-climbs-26
http://www.wellsphere.com/healthcare-industry-policy-article/unitedhealthcare-profits-doubled-compared-to-same-quarter-last-year/750937
“UnitedHealthCare Profits Doubled Compared to Same Quarter Last YearPosted Jul 22 09 10:46pm In a related story in Michigan, more people are losing their health insurance; however, profits are up for the HMOs . “Michigan health plans posted strong profits in 2008, despite seeing a 10 percent drop in commercial enrollment to 1.4 million, according to the 2009 Michigan Health Market Review.”
What’s wrong with this picture?
Medical malpractice insurors have said; “If we can’t make profits in this market, we never will.” The tort “deformers” keep wanting to strip away the rights of injured consumers, injured through no fault of their own, so med mal insurers can get even more money?
Insurance rates have not gone down in states that have enacted so-called “tort reform.” Insurance rates for doctors have only gone down in states which have enacted significant insurance reforms.
There are ways that medical malpractice rates can go down;
1.) stop making medical errors! A recent study showed that over 50,000 people die each year from preventable infections caught by patients while in a hospital, that’s how Buzz Westfall likely died. That’s a yearly death total due to preventable infections of nearly as many people as we lost in the entire Vietnam War!
2.) doctors can start self-regulating the medical profession to get rid of incompetent doctors. Studies have shown that some 85% of medical negligence cases are caused by some 10-15% of health porofessionals. I did a study over five years in Orange County New York (80-85), and the study showed that in one year (1985)the Orange County Bar had disbarred 5 times as many attorneys (15) as doctors which were disciplined (3-none lost privileges)in the entire state of New York or the same period.
3.) there can be competition for doctors’ insurance accounts. We passed a new law that allowed doctors (and other insureds) to go to insurers as a group and bargain for lower rates. Prior to this law, states had “anti-group laws” which prevented consumers from such group bargaining. So, if good docs banded together and excluded the bad docs from their group, the good docs’ rates would go down, and the bad docs rates would be so high they’d be priced out of the market because of their own uninsurability. The same law allowed for doctors to form a kind of self-insurance mechanism called a “risk retention group” to pool premiums and form their own insurance provider to counterbalance the nearly monopolistic power of inurers in the marketplace.
BlueCross has said that medical malpractice rates have nothing to do with the cost of health insurance.
When looking at the problems of health insurance, it’s easy for those which simply want to strip away consumers’ rights to make a bare claim of some relationship between healthcare insurance and medical malpractice insurance rates. The facts demostrate no such relationship, and health insurers say no such relationship exists.
I think this letter is play #1 from the Insurance Company playbook. This issue is such a non-starter. The only reason why is because the insurance lobby lines the pockets of GOP reps to make a big stink about it (hey, just like the whole health care debate and these “grass roots” movements paid for by insurance lobbies with the help of radio talk show hosts). Tort reform only benefits one party, the insurance companies, of course they want tort reform because that means they pay out less for medical mistakes. The dollar amount associated with that the entire insurance reform debate is just a drop in the bucket. It is miniscule.
Tell me Charles, if you had to have a leg amputated and you go into to have it done and the wrong leg gets cut off…oh, and they still need to amputate the other leg…what’s that worth to you? $250K 500K? what’s one of your limbs worth? Anyhow, you’d lose…cause you don’t have a leg to stand on….BOO YAH!!
“Ultimate Outsourcing
Now, Mexican medicine. American companies are building hospitals south of the border to serve refugees from an ailing health-care system.”
http://www.newsweek.com/id/169827
Medical tourism, which used to be mainly for elective surgery, and aimed at people who could afford weeklong trips to Brazil, is becoming an increasingly viable source of more basic health care for some of those sidelined by the insurance system in America, where 47 million people are uninsured and many millions are underinsured. Now, Americans like Dorthea who live along the Mexican border are driving and even walking south in search of treatment that can cost half or less of what it does in the United States. In response, American hospital chains are starting to buy into Mexico; Dallas-based CHRISTUS Health has built six hospitals in Mexico, including the Reynosa facility Dorthea visited, through its partnership with a Mexican chain. Most of its doctors are Mexican with Mexican medical degrees.
The Mexican health-care option is particularly appealing for Texans because the state has such a high uninsured rate; it was 25 percent in 2004. Along the border, that number is even higher. Incomes in the area are low, too, so even when employers do offer insurance, the cost of medical premiums still may prohibitive for employees, according to a 2007 report prepared by Texas state authorities.
And though hospitals on the U.S. side pour hundreds of millions of dollars a year into charity care, they and other community health centers are strained. The Hope Family Health Center in McAllen—right across the border from Reynosa—sees from 50-100 uninsured patients a week, but always has a waiting list, says interim executive director Rebecca Ramirez, who adds that she has some family members who will drive to Mexico for their medical care.
Older Americans who live near the Mexican border have always crossed in search of dental care and pharmaceutical drugs, neither of which are fully covered by Medicare, according to Prof. David Warner, who studies cross-border health care at the University of Texas’s LBJ School of Public Affairs.
This growing demand for lower-cost procedures is fueling an increase in hospital construction, often in developing countries and targeted in part at foreign customers. Mexico’s largest private-hospital chain, Grupo Empresarial Angeles, is building 15 new hospitals over the next three years and hopes foreigners will make up 20 percent of their patients by 2010, up from 5 percent now