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Thursday, January 16, 2003
A pre-emptive strike on John Edwards
President Couldn't Get Accepted To Law School is going after lawyers. Well, not the lawyers who helped get him selected to his job, but those other lawyers who hurt decent saintly heart surgeons, who may or may not kill cats, like Bill Frist.
With doctors across the country protesting the cost of malpractice insurance, President Bush is making a renewed push for strict limits on the jury awards he blames for skyrocketing premiums.
Insurers have indeed been paying more in recent years to cover lawsuits and malpractice settlements.
But many experts cite other factors, including poor investment returns and the insurers' own business practices, for making significant contributions to the premium increases. Even representatives of the insurance industry blame factors in addition to jury verdicts.
And figures collected by the federal government show that court judgments in malpractice cases have not risen nearly as fast as some advocates of new limits have asserted. In fact, the average size of judgments against doctors and other health care workers dropped in the first nine months of 2002, according to the government numbers.
In a speech in Scranton, Pa., today, Mr. Bush said that "frivolous lawsuits" were the source of the problem. "We're a litigious society," Mr. Bush said. "Everybody is suing, it seems like."
Bush v. Gore
Mr. Bush's plan tracks closely a bill that passed the House last year, which would set the maximum damage award for "pain and suffering" at $250,000 and reduce lawyers' fees
$250,000...hmmmm...that's about what Dick Cheney received in dividends in 2001. Of course they were taxed back then. I guess a person could make do with what Dick gets off of his investments...for one year.
Combined, the total annual amount of malpractice settlements and judgments rose to $5.05 billion in 2001
from $3.66 billion a decade ago, adjusted for inflation. In the first nine months of last year — the most recent data available — total payments were $3.53 billion.
Some advocates of new limits have argued that the rate of increase has been sharper. For example, a Health and Human Services Department report last summer that is often cited by Congressional supporters and other advocates of malpractice overhaul asserted that "the number of megaverdicts is increasing rapidly," adding, "The average award rose 76 percent from 1996-1999."
But according to the National Practitioner Data Bank the average malpractice judgment against doctors and other health care professionals rose 8.5 percent from 1996 to 1999, or 2.1 percent if adjusted for inflation. Insurers are required to report malpractice payments to the databank.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services based their number on data from the insurance industry, according to the report's footnotes. An agency spokesman, Bill Pierce, said the statement about a "76 percent" increase reflected only doctors who had seen the largest premium increases — something the report did not mention.
More fun with numbers from the folks who are bringing you record deficits for ever and ever and ever and ever....
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