Resuscitating the Docs Fix

Thanks, Jay. You rock. It’s okay to leave “bribe” in there; it’s more honest. Can you change it back, please? But what’s with the relative lack of posts this week from you, KT, and Amy? (your Burris post aside – plus the, ahem, comments, though I’m not part of the inner circle commentariat) It’s hard to believe that Congress can go a week without some drama. thx

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said: “I don’t know of a single person who wants to see reimbursements cut to doctors who treat Medicare patients. But if Congress is going to step in and prevent it, we should not do it by racking up more debt on the government’s credit card.”
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It certainly is an honest (if newly found) position to say you are against adding to the debt, but to say there is a problem and offer no alternative is a political rather than a principled stand.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/21/department-of-propaganda/
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Funny how that misses the attention of the Swamp.
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Here’s the other thing–if people are going to have to sacrifice for health care reform, why don’t the trial lawyers? And why isn’t the press asking hard questions about the fact that the trial lawyers bar owns the Dem party? Howard Dean said it.

Jay I thought I read that the President has allowed for this fix in his budget and that it will be paid for down the road, so should not add to deposit?
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Like Deconstructiva have been wondering why not many posts. Karen still ill?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/10/alexander_to_obama_dont_create.asp#more

“The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, had hoped to whisk the Medicare bill through the Senate this week, before taking up a much larger bill to provide health insurance to nearly 30 million Americans.

But Republicans had other ideas, and so did some moderate and conservative Democrats. They said they could not swallow the Medicare bill because it would cost $247 billion over 10 years and none of the cost would be offset or paid for.”

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With all of the propaganda from the left, and Democrats singing the praises of ObamaCare, the American taxpayer is yet again at the mercy of the spend and tax Democrats who are in control of both the House and Senate.
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But, as the two political races for Governor in Virginia and New Jersey are showing clearly, the voters are fed up with all the crap in Washington. The Dems are going to lose big in 2010.
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Yippee!!

One of the most tiresome and dishonest arguments in the HC debate is the continued drivel by liberals and the MSM is that the Republicans have not offered any alternatives. They have and they have been consistently blocked and voted down by the Democrats. Or as was demonstrated yesterday other than some privileged Democrats, Republicans were locked out of any discussions on the bills.

Yes there are lies being told in this debate but most liberals and certainly the WH only need to look into the mirror to see some of the biggest liars.

Still waiting for C-Span to broadcast the HC discussions so “we know whose making deals” to quote the Chosen One. Or to see the mathematical failures of the Democrats in this “budget neutral”deal.

If a corporation tried this math just imagine Waxman’s head exploding while screaming about fraud and the whiny liberals on this site calling for perp walks of those execs.

Maybe liberals should start by being honest with themselves.

deconstructiva and carostexas1:
Karen’s been swamped with a mag story and I spent much of yesterday working on that webstory and a couple of other longer term things .I think our rate of posts has decreased because a) things in DC are kind of in a holding pattern until the two chambers produce their bills, and b) we’re all taking advantage to the pause to flesh out reporting on some longer term projects. Which means less immediate news and posts… Apologies!

As to whether the dcs fix is offset: it is assumed in the bottom line of obama’s long term budgets — but, no, there’s no offset for that spending. Reid today abandoned the 10-year fix and is moving a shorter on. I will post on this shortly.
JNS

“They have and they have been consistently blocked and voted down by the Democrats”
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Great please list the proposals and how they were blocked and voted down.
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Start with McConnell’s please as that was the subject of the comment.
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Thanks.

…thanks, Jay. I hope long-term projects include books from you and KT. Amy and Joe have written books, so you two should be next. There’s no doubt you both have lots of fun stories to share.

That was an asinine post even for you. Has every Democrat who has complained about what is wrong with the current system put forth a plan? Has Obama who continually and arrogantly bashes everyone put forth a plan?

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/52896

Here are 3 plan put forth by Republicans. And you can add the votes on taxpayer aborttion and illegal immigrant amendments that were voted down to the list. Although Dumos screamed liar that they were part of any bill but yet voted them down.

Save your arrogance for the other liberal dolts on this site. I am not impressed.

Gosh freep you could have just you didn’t know and retracted your assertion.
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But thanks for the response.

…the reality is that there are nowhere near 60 Senators ready to vote for federal caps on non-economic damages…
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Good. As a disincentive for large insurers, hospitals and pharmaceuticals to do harm to their customers, what would you replace it with? And if civil liability is so onerous, why doesn’t it prevent these corporate actors from killing a couple hundred thousand of us every year to make a buck? Unless these industries are willing to accept serious government regulation of their treatment of customers and patients, which they never will (and which would cost taxpayers a bundle in enforcement), let them face serious economic consequences when it can be proved before a judge and jury that they’ve done serious wrong. Mere ecomomic damages wouldn’t even eat into the golf junket budget.

And you response proved your arrogance and apparently your inability to read.

Yes, every business purposely sets out to injure its customer base. You are too stupid to breed

Thank you Jay, Senators are putting out a lot of smoke screens I will be glad when they put their bill out. I think Nancy Pelosi will also.

“You are too stupid to breed.
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Actually, I found other reasons for not breeding, unlike your parents. Think <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy"Idiocracy.

Yes, every business purposely sets out to injure its customer base. You are too stupid to breed

Every business purposely sets out to turn a profit. Do you think pharmaceutical companies don’t have a slush fund for when their patented drug, whoops!, causes heart attacks instead of preventing them? Do you think insurance companies are using rescission to help their customer base (of course I am referring to rescission in cases where intentional fraud is not determined)?
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Caps on litigation merely sets a neat little price tag on what essentially amounts to murder. Cut some corners on development only to find that the little green pill causes cancer? No worries, that’s only going to cost $250,000 a pop or whatever, which is probably barely 0.01% of the profit you made in the five years you sold it.

“No worries, that’s only going to cost $250,000 a pop or whatever, which is probably barely 0.01% of the profit you made in the five years you sold it.”
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And that’s excatly how the drug companies do it right now. They figured this method out over 50 years ago. Supress unfavorable studies, ghost write postive medical reviews, lie to doctors or put the willing ones on the payroll. By the time the FDA or any medical journal figures it all out they have made more than enough profit to compensate for any litigation losses.
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Try a few cases and maybe win 1 or 2 with sympathic judges and juries and then settle with the remaining plaintiffs for a fraction. Anyone who does not know this should research some of the bigger drug compaines like Wyeth and Bayer and see how how they have been doing this same thing for years.

There is no “inner circle commentariat“, as far as I know we’re all the same here.

Thank you very, very much for responding to commentary with this helpful information, Jay Newton-Small!

spob,

As a “trial lawyer”, I can tell you that none of the “tort reform” ideas floating around in Congress or anywhere else will result in any savings.

I, generally, do not do medical malpractice, but I recently spoke with a friend who does. We talked about the caps which have been enacted in states like Texas and Kansas. While it might have put some malpractice attorneys out of work, it has not reduced the insurance rates for doctors, nor has it reduced “defensive medice” as practiced. In fact the leader in charges for medicaid patients is a town in Texas which gets over $15,000 per patient. The per capita income in the town is $12,000. And I can tell you that rate per patient has nothing to do with “defensive medicine” but everything to do with the sky rocketing costs of health care.

The fact is from 1997 to 2006, malpractice suits went down 4% or 8% and (tort claims went down 21%), yet you can bet the malpractice premiums went up. Why? Because insurance companies don’t assess rates on the number of claims, but on their ability to make profits. Why does a doctor who has never had a claim in 30 years see his rates triple? Because the insurance companies have taken a hit from the market crashes over the past decade and they need to make up the money somewhere. Since the insurance companies have the doctors by the cojones regarding malpractice insurance, they comply.

If you want to see a successful program on reducing malpractice claims and payoffs, I suggest you look at the program implimented by the University of Michigan in 2002. Since the start of the program, the University of Michigan has reduced its reserves for malpractice claims from $70 million per year to $13 million per year. What did they do?

Well, the first thing, is, instead of deny, deny and silence of the doctors as insisted by the hospital and its lawyers, doctors owned up to their mistakes, talked to the patients and agreed to work with the hospital to find out what went wrong. Often, it was just listening to the patient, and an “I’m sorry, I made a mistake”, was enough to prevent the filing of a suit or a claim.

As you can see, this did not require a change in the law, a cap on damages, or even a change in the behavior of trial attorneys. It simply involved a change in the doctor’s behavior towards the patients, and the hospital being willing to work with patients to resolve problems instead of covering them up.

“Do you think pharmaceutical companies don’t have a slush fund for when their patented drug, whoops!

Every company needs one because of the lottery legal system that has been set-up. Lawyers take cases on contingencies knowing that in most cases the company will be forced to settled, they collect 33%+ expenses. Gee I bet that the HC insurance companies would like those margins.

“Caps on litigation merely sets a neat little price tag on what essentially amounts to murder.”
The testing for all drugs is done under clinical trials supervised by the FDA. SO are you saying that government run regulatory agencies and health care systems are useless or just negligent?

This is just another area liberals want companies to spend billions of dollars to provide a service and expect it to be delivered tomorrow and oh yes you take all the risk and keep the cost at breakeven so as not to inconvenience the consumer.

Careful liberals there may not be a drug company left to provide meds to treat your delusions

Damage caps don’t work. They have them in Texas and Kansas and I don’t remember hearing how those caps lower malpractice insurance rates or lowered the cost of health care. One town in Texas leads the nation in costs of treatment for each medicaid patient. The government is paying an average of $15,000 per patient in a town where the per capita income in $12,000. I read an article about those doctors, and the costs were not due to “defensive medicine”.

The problem is that the malpractice insurance rates are not based on claims. From 1997 to 2006 malpractice suits fell 4% (and tort claims overall fell 21%!) but you can be sure malpractice premiums did not fall. The insurance companies loss millions on Wall Street and had to make up their losses some way. But better way that raising the premiums on doctors, who are always frightened about being sued!

fhmadvocat

http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2005/10/10/story8.html

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2009/10/07/1007floridamedmal.html

You have followed the same liberal tacticof if you repeat a lie enough times it becomes the perceived truth. Unfortunately for liberals there are more outlets than their sources. Capping suits works for everyone but the lawyers.

“You are too stupid to breed”
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Have you ever considered the possibility that some of us just bump uglies for fun?

Here’s a simple question for all of you:

Who would you like to take care of you in 20 years? The brightest of students who aspire to become physicians, or the dumb kids in the class who can’t get into law schools and business schools and end up in medical school by default?

If you don’t give kids incentive to enter the demanding field of medicine in this capitalistic society, then you will end up driving those on the top to go to a more lucrative field. Imaging: a primary care physician 10 years out of school makes about $190,000; a lawyer about $350,000-500,000, a business person, ie CFO or CEO, upward of a million.

If you were 18, what would you want to do when you grow up?

Then, maybe we will import more doctors from Pakistan and Mexico to take care of you at that time…

JNS: Since things are in a holding pattern in DC, why not just make things up? Fox does it all the TIME and people swear by them. I know I swear at them. Something about a knife fight in the senate over healthcare reform would be nice. Maybe a little story about John Edwards being spotted leaving Michelle Bachman’s hotel room at 4 am carrying a plunger and a feather? Prostitutes protesting tart reform?

“Who would you like to take care of you in 20 years?”

That’s the real question here, along with which doctor will not cave to Big Pharm’s latest ‘miracle’ drug that may or may not cap you.

At some point down the line you’ll move from the hustle and bustle of well lit hallways and people in lab coats, to a room, a bed, and someone to care for you. Who will that be, someone with a faint grasp of your condition, or someone invested in your health, someone who cares.

The funniest thing I heard about a med school orientation: “Those among you with the lowest possible grades to graduate will still be called Doctor.”

Do imported doctors get the same info?

I haven’t had an American born PCP for over 20 years. Most of the specialists we’ve seen are foriegn born also. I get good care. I think the US born doctors are called vetrenarians now.