Tort Reform!
 

Why haven't docs sued insurers on a fraud theory? If you raise rates to cover your own economic losses while simultaneously claiming the increase derives from made-up adverse market conditions, aren't you committing fraud?

Don't you have the intenional misrepresentation of a material fact with detrimental reliance required for a fraud claim? Why hasn't that class action been filed?

Alternatively, why not a price-gouging claim under some state's price gouging statute? I know the insurance contracts say rates can be jacked for any reason the companies want, but there's got to be spome legal basis to hang them...

Tort Reform!
 

Ever sued your insurer? Better yet, ever made a claim? What happened? Right. Lesson is, Good luck getting coverage in the future. It benefits the doctors much more to point the finger at lawyers than at their insurers. They need insurance - they don't need lawyers (they think - bwahhhahahahhhahahhahhh).

The insurance lobby is pretty powerful, and they tend to hire some expensive legal talent. In CA, we have an insurance commissioner who tries to do something about gouging, but has had only limited success.

Tort Reform!
 

Do you really think that is how business works?

Tort Reform!
 

Touche. But at least thats the theory. The govt doesn't even try/pretend to attempt to adhere to that theoretical standard.

Tort Reform!
 

They pretend. They just have a lot more restrictions on them than private employers do. The whole due process part of firing, etc. I think that the gov't is not all that unlike a business of a comparable size (if there were one . . . ) in terms of bureacracy. Except, the gov't has to operate under rules that are actually laws in some cases and thus has even less flexibility than a private company -- they can't just revamp evaluation and compensation structures whenever they want to. Or, that's my impression.

And on the state level, and even more so the local level, firing is fraught with political implications -- and the people at the very top are always political.

The accumulated debt today is $8.2 trillion. Interest payments for 2005 were over $350 billion.

I guess that's insignificant, too -- right?

Tort Reform!
 

Seems to me that they do, nowadays. Like Enron, or Adelphia, or Tyco.

S_A_M

Tort Reform!
 

Give me a break. Your comments are just a product of denial. To try and blame the outlandish insurance rates on the insurance companys trying to make up for failing investments is a joke. If they were just charging the high rates to pad their pockerts a cut throat insurance agency would come in and offer lower rates. In some counties insurance companys just won't cover obstraticians. Many county hospitals have to create their own inurance. Many insurance companys have dropped medical insurance all together because it is not profitable. If they were simply gouging doctors to line their pockets every insurance company would be offering medical malpratice insurance wherever they could. Blaming the insurance companys, or thinking regulating them is going to help the situation, is pure economic ignorance. If a business is not profitable all the regulation in the world is not going to make it better. Insurance companys charge the outlandish rates because that is the only way they can make a profit. And the only way the cost of medical insurance would have to be so high is because of litigation. There is simply no other reasonable explanation.

The doctors don't seem to be blaming the insurance companys and they are the ones being gouged. Don't you think the doctors are in the best position to know who is responsible for the high rates. Yet they don't blame the insurance companys, they blame lawyers - do they just not understand the situation? No they understand what is happening, and no amount of B.S from the trial lawyers is going to obscure the obvious truth that a bat could see.

There is a lot of mistakes in hospitals, so all this money we spend on litigation does not seem to make the system safer. So there is so much litigation insurance companys are pulling out and yet we still have all lot of screw ups. The trial lawyer system is not working and screwing up the economy.

Tort Reform!
 

The problem with your approach is that the government is often doing a job that wouldn't be profitable in the private sector--giving away money, protecting things that wouldn't be protected, etc. So it's not market driven. You can't just evaluate it like a salesman--so a cop arrests 10 people/month and he gets a toaster? Wonder why you get a lot of parking tickets? Much of what the government does can't easily be evaluated by teh same standards. How do you know the guy did a good job reviewing the FCC license application?

Sure, there are lots of places to root out corrupion and laziness, but there are in the private sector too. ask fringey's boss.

Tort Reform!
 

The doctors are not afraid of insurance companys. That is absurd. Half the leadership of the Republican party in this area is doctors. The former head of the AMA is chairman of the local Republican central committee. He doesn't blame the insurance companys at all. None of the doctors do. They blame trial lawyers and that is there sole reason for being in politics. Stopping trial lawyers. These guys are not stupid. If the insurance companys were the problem they would know it. In order to believe in creationsim you have to believe that every biology Phd is stupid. In order to believe that the insurance companys are at fault for the high rates you would have to believe that almost every doctor, and all the heads of the AMA are stupid. That is just absurd.

Yes but how much of that date was left there by prior generations. The overwhelming bulk of it has been created in the past twenty years. Like I said, recent deficits cause the problem not long term debt.

And like others have said, it's disengenuous to pretend that the problem will easily and painlessly evaporate with a growing economy and balanced budgets for the next 20 years. You'll most likely have the former, but the last two decades have taught us to be quite skeptical of the latter. With that reality, it's not a hard stretch to conclude that the problem keeps getting passed down.

Tort Reform!
 

Yes but those laws can be changed. There is no reason government jobs can not be performanced based like private sector jobs. But any time performance (actually doing your job) is entered into the equation for job retention or increase compensation for doing good work is entered into the equation, the Public Unions, most particularly the teacher unions, cry bloody murder.

In the private sector one of the most important aspects of running a successful business is cutting out workers that aren't producing. But in the public sector for some reason people seem to think that non-producing employees should keep their jobs. That is an absurd notion, and government will continue to be highly inefficient and waste our money until that paradigm changes.

Who is being disengenuous? If we balanced the budget for the next twenty years there would be no problem. I never said that was likely to happen.

Tort Reform!
 

Yes - many times. Once personally and many times for clients. I sued a company handling my car insurance, got them to settle, and I have never had a problem getting car insurance since then. Insurance companys, like any other companys are greedy. If insurance companys were making so much money from medical insurance (gouging as you like to say) everybody and his brother would be jumping in. Instead everyone is getting out.