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Slumping Support for Health Care Reform

by GoozNews ~ 06 Oct 2009 05:41pm

A new Zogby poll on health care reform shows just 27 percent of the American public supports the legislation as it is shaping up in Congress. But, according to this recap on the Health Affairs website, throw in tort reform, a public plan and eliminate the individual mandate and support soars to 57 percent.

The only problem with turning those sentiments into a winning legislative strategy is that most of the 2,232 people in the poll who changed their minds based on adding tort reform and removing the mandate were Republicans, while most of the converts made through adding a public plan were Democrats. It might work in a poll. It doesn't work on the Hill, where a move in either direction alienates the other side. 

Comments

Interesting that the medical

Tue, 10/06/2009 - 23:08 — MKirschMD

Interesting that the medical profession and the public support tort reform.  The only constituency solidly backing the status quo is the one who is enriched by it.  Stakeholders in health care have a very difficult time separating their own interest from the public interest.  Physicians aren't perfect, but I think we do this task better than most.  I don't think that doctors would oppose a cancer vaccine because it would be 'bad for business'.   Why, then, would folks support the current medical malpractice system that tortures doctors and rescues very few patients and generates billions of dollars of defensive medical costs?  www.MDWhistleblower.blogspot.com

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Folks support the current

Wed, 10/07/2009 - 09:51 — gpawelski

Folks support the current medical malpractice system because our justice system is a system of checks and balances. Before someone can even bring a case, they have to convince an attorney that their case is worth gambling time and money on. The contingent-fee agreement weeds out countless cases that have no merit. Once an attorney accepts the case, a judge will most likely scrutinize the facts and law applicable to the case through a summary judgment. If the judge decides that the case has merit, then the case will be presented to an impartial jury of twelve men and women. If those twelve men and women are convinced that the plaintiff has proven his or her case, the jury will then rule in favor of the plaintiff, and award compensation for the plaintiff's injuries. The judge has an opportunity to modify, reduce, or set aside the jury's verdict. Then, the defendant has an opportunity to appeal his case to higher courts, and even more experienced judges can then modify, reduce, or set aside a jury's verdict.

The burden of proof in any case is always on the plaintiff, which means the deck is stacked in favor of the defendants. Multimillion-dollar jury verdicts rarely survive the appeals process. Yet tort reformers continue to argue that we need more barriers to file lawsuits, and statutory limitations on how much money can be awarded in the lawsuits that are filed. The reason is that the big corporations who push for tort reform don't want the bad press and public scrutiny that accompanies trials where people are severely injured or killed. Instead, they prefer to enter into confidential settlements that the public never knows about.

Tort reform isn't about fixing a "broken" justice system; it's about protecting the public image and bottom lines of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world. Tort reform isn't about protecting doctors from high insurance rates; it's about protecting their insurers from having to pay large judgments. The doctors ARE the insurance companies. According to the Physician Insurers Association of America, a trade group of about 50 doctor-owned malpractice insurers, they cover about 60% of U.S. doctors in private practice and hospitals. Tort reform isn't about keeping "greedy lawyers" from filing frivolous lawsuits; it's about keeping those who are severely injured out of the court system and away from the public eye.

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