A Thought About Healthcare

[rogue06]

I think tort reform could help, but when you have over 250,000 deaths a year to medical malpractice, you shouldn't eliminate it...

And if you have socialized medicine, can you still sue over malpractice? Since a Dr. would be a government employee, would you not be able to sue them?

Tort reform is not even remotely the same as eliminating suing for malpractice.

[Littlejoe]

Tort reform is not even remotely the same as eliminating suing for malpractice.

IIRC it's about limiting how much and who can be sued...yes?

[thewriteranon]

Torts can die in the fires of Mt. Doom.

[carpedm9587]

IIRC it's about limiting how much and who can be sued...yes?

Yes- Tort Reform (as I understand it) is about limiting who can bring suits and the amounts they can sue for. IIRC, it can also be about requiring those bringing the suit to pay the costs if they do not win in court, hopefully minimizing "nuisance" suits.

[rogue06]

IIRC it's about limiting how much and who can be sued...yes?

Depends on the bill. It's also about limiting frivolous law suits.

[Starlight]

IIRC it's about limiting how much and who can be sued...yes?

Often in the US it is about major companies doing something deliberately nefarious (e.g. dumping a waste substance they know is cancer-causing into effluent which they know drains into other people's drinking water supply, rather than spend money disposing the waste properly), and the people affected by their sociopathic behavior group together in a single mass-tort case where a group of lawyers represents them all and takes a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit against the company.

The existence of this type of case over the years in the US has become quite politicized, because big companies don't want to be sued and so support Republican politicians that pass 'tort reform' to prevent this happening, and because the lawyers and plantiffs in such cases tend to support the Democratic party's efforts to have more regulation etc. Historically such lawyers were, along with unions, one of the biggest sources of donor money to the Democratic party. So as part of the Republican efforts to go after the Democrats' sources of funding, they did 'tort reform' along with union-busting, to try and strangle the flow of money to the Democratic party (who were then forced to try and find new sources of financing, and they seemed to mostly settle on Wall St as a source).

Increasingly a lot of the tort reform laws allow companies to force 'arbitration', which is where you are banned from suing the company and instead need to have your case individually decided in a private court by a judge the company has appointed (to be friendly to them). The trouble with such individual decisions, apart from the biased judges, is that the individuals don't have remotely the legal power that the company does, and the company can share data with itself across multiple cases (so it can work out what arguments work and what don't by trial and error across cases) while each individual plaintiff is on their own in terms of comping up with their arguments and data etc, and the ability of the individual plantiffs to force disclosure (i.e. the usual investigative process that would find those incriminating emails that the CEO sent to senior management saying 'OK, dump that cancer-causing sludge in the nearest river') is basically non-existent.

So, for the most part, tort reform massively dis-empowers the general populace or consumers from seeking justice, and massively enables serious criminal and deliberately sociopathic behavior by companies.

There is another side to tort reform, which is that US lawsuits have historically had absurdly high penalties compared to the rest of the world (e.g. a lawsuit here you could expect anything from 10 to 100 times less of a penalty than you'd get in the US) and some parts of tort reform are about returning the US penalties to the realm of sanity.

If you want to learn more about some of the specific mass torts that happen, one of my favorite US political commentators tends to travel yearly to the US mass torts conference and interviews numerous lawyers there about their cases. So there's several hours worth of video interviews there if you're interested.

[carpedm9587]

Depends on the bill. It's also about limiting frivolous law suits.

I think the point is that "malpractice" is a subset of "frivolous lawsuits"

[JimL]

That isn't true. In the USA they will take you even if you can't pay for life threatening conditions. And even if it is not life threatening, most hospitals, especially university hospitals will take care of you if you don't have insurance. I have a very expensive medication ($1200/month) and when my insurance wanted to charge me full price (I had not met my deductible for the year yet) the hospital pharmacy gave it to me for free and wrote it off.

None of that is for free Sparko, we all end up paying for it. Now why should the rest of us have to end up paying for your life threatening emergencies or for your expensive medications?

[JimL]

What makes you think that data is not being skewed? The one that was quoted earlier was paid for by an organization that supports socialized medicine. Why do you accept those statistics?

It's all fake news, well, everything except for the gospels that is. Where do you get the idea that Nanos Research, which says that 86% of Canadians are happy with their health care system, is biased?

[Sparko]

None of that is for free Sparko, we all end up paying for it. Now why should the rest of us have to end up paying for your life threatening emergencies or for your expensive medications?

I appreciate your generosity JimL.

[Sparko]

It's all fake news, well, everything except for the gospels that is. Where do you get the idea that Nanos Research, which says that 86% of Canadians are happy with their health care system, is biased?

It says so.

Nanos Research was commissioned by the Canadian Health Coalition (CHC), a nonpartisan group

[JimL]

It says so.

Nanos Research was commissioned by the Canadian Health Coalition (CHC), a nonpartisan group

Commissioning an organization to take a poll doesn't make the polling organization, or the poll itself biased. Boy, you guys are so close minded you could never be convinced of, or by anything, other than what you already believe. Interesting how the conservative brain works.

[Sparko]

Commissioning an organization to take a poll doesn't make the polling organization, or the poll itself biased. Boy, you guys are so close minded you could never be convinced of, or by anything, other than what you already believe. Interesting how the conservative brain works.

this from the guy who's breakfast consists of the daily democratic talking points.

[JimL]

this from the guy who's breakfast consists of the daily democratic talking points.

I agree with most of the democratic talking points just like you agree with most of the conservative propaganda spewed by Fox News and the like. The difference is that we are most often correct and you republicans are most often dupes.

[Starlight]

I agree with most of the democratic talking points just like you agree with most of the conservative propaganda spewed by Fox News and the like. The difference is that we are most often correct and you republicans are most often dupes.

It's almost like one source places an emphasis on accuracy and truth and so is pretty consistently right and only makes the occasional mistake, and that the other source aims to be propaganda so consistently misleads and lies and only occasionally tells the truth to its viewers...

That's why I have so little time for the "but both sides must be half right" arguments. No, if one side is trying to be accurate, and the other side is not interested in truth, then it will not be anywhere close to both sides being equally right.