Change you can believe in?
In his speech to Congress last night, Barack Obama threw a bone to Republicans on tort reform.
Many in this chamber - particularly on the Republican side of the aisle - have long insisted that reforming our medical malpractice laws can help bring down the cost of health care. I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I have talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs. So I am proposing that we move forward on a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine. I know that the Bush Administration considered authorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues. It's a good idea, and I am directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on this initiative today.
There are credible estimates that serious tort reform could save the country between $100 and $200 billion annually in wasteful spending, as doctors practice defensive medicine to preempt lawsuits. Trial lawyers are adamantly opposed to any caps on damages and have made fighting tort reform their top priority for years. So tort reform was excluded from Obama's version of health care reform because the trial lawyers would have bitterly opposed it. Here's how former DNC chairman and medical doctor Howard Dean put it in a town hall two weeks ago. "Here's why tort reform is not in the bill. When you go to pass a really enormous bill like that, the more stuff you put in it, the more enemies you make, right? And the reason that tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everyone else they were taking on. And that is the plain and simple truth."
Now Obama says he's going to study the issue. "I am directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on this initiative today," he said.
That would be Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, whose resume includes eight years as director of the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association.
So Obama has chosen a former industry lobbyist to run tort reform.
Why are people cynical about health care reform?
