Tort Reform!
 

Budget cuts are a bitch.

Tort Reform!
 

And the doctors don't say that the doctors are the problem? Odd, that.

Tort Reform!
 

Almost as odd as the attorneys who insist they aren't the problem....

Tort Reform!
 

I had a law school professor who insisted that malpractice rates are too high, but that successful malpractice suits don't correspond to the cases in which doctors have commmitted malpractice. The problem being that you have lots of accidents, and lots of expense from legal claims, but that the latter doesn't do anything to deter the former. The worst of all worlds, if you will. (I don't know how anybody could prove that this is the cause -- i.e., establish the lack of a causal connection between injury and recovery -- without re-evaluating the evidence from a ton of trials, so I'm a little suspicious, but I find it plausible.)

If so, it sounds like there's an opening for a deal which (a) finds a way to police doctors effectively, and (b) limits legal recovery for meritless cases. Unfortunately, most of the people who take up this issue seem interested only in (b), and not (a).

Tort Reform!
 

The trial lawyers want A and not B. The Doctors want B and not A. Both would be good, but as usual, there is no interest group pushing for both.

Tort Reform!
 

One might think of that as a short-coming of interest-group politics.

Tort Reform!
 

am I on ignore? I solved this problem. Sharia!

Tort Reform!
 

If I'm writing this, you're not on ignore.

Tort Reform!
 

There's no interest group pushing for either.

Tort Reform!
 

if you want to be perceived in abetter light here,
1- new avatar
2- new sig line (get RT to help on both)
3- quit responding to spanky- we already have a tY
4- post most interesting and funny shit

4 easy steps.

Tort Reform!
 

Serious question:

What's an avatat?

RT took me to get a tattoo for my birthday. Does that count or do I have to get another one?

Tort Reform!
 

1 spelling error insults are not really the way to get to step 4

2 I am considering a bar code for JW Black on my bicep- you can do that- we live far enough away from each other

The so called "experts".
 

One at a time...

1. If we don't control the Saudis and Iraqi reserves, we don't control the supplier, who controls the price. By taking Iraq, we have leverage to compete with the Chinese, who are buying oil from the Middle East like mad.

2. I agree. I was not saying that the GOP is doing the right thing. But if we can't shrink the big programs you cited, we might as well try to shrink everything else we can. You seem to advocate that if we can't shrink SS, medicare and defense, we should just throw our hands in the air and give up shrinking any govt programs. I say we should shrink all we can.

3. Bullshit. You plagiarize more Chomskyites than anyone else on this board. Sidd offered actual numbers. You offered a broad brush political statement about how Bush was stealing from future generations to fatten his rich friends. That's just cheap crap talk, and its based partly on the absurd presumption that China will one day dump our treasuries (or some other doomsday scenario being spun by Paul Krugman). There will be no massive black swan in global economic relations involving us and China. We're not going to get blown up like the Pacific Rim did a few years back. Chinese borrowing is not going to throw us into a great depression. Nobody is going to do anything to shut down the world's biggest marketplace. As we go, the world goes. China needs us right now as much as we need them.

Now go find me a taken out of context quote from Bob Rubin about how dangerous and woefully uninformed my thinking is...

Tort Reform!
 

I suspect you'll find (b) is not as big an issue as limiting legal recovery for cases with merit; even if you eliminate 20 $25,000 payouts for meritless cases, you have not had as much impact as if you limit one $1 million recovery to $250,000.

The bigger problem for doctors is the big payouts, which, of course, come from jury verdicts or settlements where there is substantial fear of the outcome of a jury verdict. So when tort reform includes a limit of damages for pain and suffering to $250,000, that limit is going to likely to bite when a child is incapacitated because a doctor ACTUALLY screwed up. It is not about fraud, lawyers fees, or meritless cases. We only hear about those because it is easier to get traction on those issues rather than saying, "We don't like to pay a lot when we screw up and hurt people."

I happen to like our jury system, and put a lot of faith in 12 ordinary people. As to trial lawyers, they're a necessary evil and if someone wants to talk about modifying the contingent fee system, I think of that as a relatively recent innovation that should be rethought periodically. But is government regulation really the right way to reform that market?

Tort Reform!
 

An easy solution would be to make lawyers bringing frivolous cases liable for costs of defense. And I mean really liable... not just some tootless frivolous litigation statute no judge will ever enforce. I think we should create a separate cause of action under which a successfully defended doc can sue the lawyer who sued him, as well as the lawyer's expert, and any expert doc who provided a certificate of merit saying the lawyer had a good malptractice case (which is req'd in many states).

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Seems fair to me. We'll never rid this country of its litigation fixation unless we start making litigants pay for those reckless pulls on the slot machine arm. Potential loss of costs of experts and time invested are not enough. A good plaintiff's lawyer has absorption of multiple losses of such costs built into the business model.

ETA: A fair legal market allows everybody who plays the game to get sued. Its an operating cost, just like a developer has to set some cash aside to deal with union problems and zoning issues.