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POPSRepubliucan Health Bill “As Leader Boehner has made clear, our proposal will focus on the No. 1 concern of the American people—reducing health care costs, and we do it at a price tag our nation can afford,” said spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier. “Our proposal will help struggling middle-class families and small businesses by increasing access to affordable, high-quality health care,” Ferrier said. It also includes a ban on any “federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother.” Of course, in true Dem fashion, they responded to the Republican bill with this profound and poignant comment: It’s “insubstantial.” and…
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POPS GOP Set to Propose Its Own Health Bill Republicans have talked about a variety of alternatives to Democratic efforts on health care, but decided to put out their own bill after seeing details of the legislation unveiled by Democrats last Thursday. GOP leaders hope to offer the measure as an alternative during debate on the Democratic bill, and a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said Republicans would be allowed to do so. In the Senate, where Democratic leaders are pushing a proposal to create a new government-run insurance plan, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, made clear again Sunday that he opposed the idea. The senator said he wouldn't try to block debate on the bill, but signaled he would support any Republican efforts to block a vote on it. by Greg Hitt at wsj.com
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POPSPelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers
While there is debate over the details, it is clear that medical malpractive lawsuits have some impact on driving health care costs higher. There are likely a number of procedures that are done simply as a defense against future possible litigation. Recall this from the Washington Post: “Lawmakers could save as much as $54 billion over the next decade by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, congressional budget analysts said today " a substantial sum that could help cover the cost of President Obama’s overhaul of the nation’s health system. New research shows that legal reforms would not only lower malpractice insurance premiums for medical providers, but would also spur providers to save money by ordering fewer tests and procedures aimed primarily at defending their decisions in court, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, wrote in a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).”
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POPSThe internal contradictions of ObamaCare Another major difference is that medical school is free in places like France. Here, doctors go to work with truly crushing med school debt that take years to pay down. Its hardly fair that they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their education and could now be told they can’t expect the ‘doctor’ type compensation we’re used to seeing.
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POPS"Architects of Ruin" throw out common sense and decades of experience in order to make loans that were almost certain to go unpaid. The effort was launched during the Carter administration but really gained momentum and a head of steam during the Clinton years. (GOPers shouldn't feel too smug as the Bush administration continued and even expanded the practice). "Architects of Ruin" can be advance-ordered now on Amazon.com. No doubt, it will generate a flood of negative reviews from liberals in the mainstream media and their allies in the political and academic worlds in part because of sensational tidbits like the fact White House Chief of Staff was paid "more than $46,000 an hour as a board member for Freddie Mac ." What caught my eye today, though, concerns a little known fact about a long-forgotten class-action lawsuit filed in 1994 by three young trial lawyers, one of whom just happens to be sitting in the Oval Office today as president.
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POPSA Tale of Two Protection Rackets: ACORN’s — and The Media’s This is the network that surreptitiously rigged GM pickup trucks in staged crash tests in 1993 to show that the vehicles were unsafe " and failed to inform viewers that the simulations used incendiary devices to ignite the explosions. This is the network that sent out an intrepid NBC News reporter in a canoe to cover treacherous New Jersey flooding in 2005 " only to be shown up by passers-by who sloshed in front of the camera and demonstrated that the water was only a few inches deep. This is the network that tried to arrange Islamophobia stings at NASCAR events in 2006 to try and “expose” racism among Southerners. The network worked with a Muslim activist who sent a recruitment notice across the Internet: They are looking for some Muslim male candidates for their show who would be willing to go to non-Muslim gatherings and see if they attract any discriminatory comments or actions while being filmed…NBC is willing to fly in someone and cover their weekend expenses.
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POPSJake Tapper's ACORN Posts at his ABC Political Punch Blog ABC's Charles Gibson --- "Unaware" of Five Day-Old ACORN Controversy, Senate Vote to De-Fund ACORN Gibson, as John Stephenson and P.J. Gladnick of NewsBusters noted in September of last year, as a result of his interview with GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, twisted her words, with the help of selective editing, to portray her as some kind of out of touch, excessively religious, militaristic rube. With the above interview, no editing is required. Who’s out of touch now, Charlie? Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org. _______________________________________ UPDATE: Rush and some NB commenters are speculating that Gibson may have said “I haven’t heard about it” because the only other alternative would be to say a completely damning “We didn’t think it was important.” Gibson’s laugh at the beginning of his response does seem to be a bit nervous.
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POPSEviscerating Old Media Pomposity The will, instead, retreat to their steadily home turf, telling their steadily diminishing audiences that they should pay no attention to those louts who provide inconvenient truths about liberalism. A lot of good it will do them. Lord notes: Americans have learned the hard way that there was and is a serious effort by some of the most powerful figures in American journalism to quite deliberately keep Americans from making "informed decisions" by denying them accurate information. ... across five decades of American journalistic history, the instinct of many Old Media institutions -- specifically including NBC and the New York Times -- has been to deliberately withhold the truth. To quite deliberately use their journalism skills and tools to misrepresent those whose politics they do not favor. Were this, say, the field of medicine, practitioners of this kind of thing would lose their license to practice,
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POPSThe Real Issue: Who Should Control HealthCare? You Or Washington These areas are primarily marginal fixes to the current health care system and do not entail a major restructuring. Reforms where there may be common ground include: subsidizing low income American citizens and legal residents; requiring all Americans to have health care insurance; reform of medical malpractice tort system; permitting inter-state competition among health insurers; portability of insurance; and promoting healthy lifestyles. Obviously, the devil will be in the details of crafting these reforms. If the real issue of reform was to reduce the overall cost of medical care in America, the health care reform debate would center on medical malpractice tort law, promoting healthy lifestyles and dealing with the high end of life costs. Medical malpractice insurance and defensive medicine account for approximately 18 percent of health care costs. Obesity accounts for approximately 9 percent. Alcoholism and smoking account for another large percent.
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POPSThe Bad Medicine of the Republican Doctors Then there's Oklahoma Senator and unexpected Obama confidante Tom Coburn. As a Senate candidate in 2004, Dr. Coburn famously warned that "lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom." Upon his arrival in the Senate, the former obstetrician was elevated to the Judiciary Committee despite having advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions. More recently, Coburn the C Street marriage counselor to John Ensign and Mark Sanford turned Deather:
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POPSPrograms in Several States Could Address Medical-Malpractice Abuses Today the hospital encourages employees to report mistakes, and also to report issues that might lead to mistakes. A committee of peers reviews serious incidents. If the panel determines that a mistake has occurred, the hospital and doctors apologize. In addition, the University of Michigan compensates the patient or the family. The costs to such a review are high, said Mr. Boothman. They are included in the hospital's risk-management budget, which has grown to more than $3 million annually, up from $500,000 in 2001. But claims against the hospital have been reduced to 106 in 2008 from 121 in 2001. Andrew Muth, an Ypsilanti, Mich., plaintiffs lawyer, said the hospital's project achieves the primary goal of litigation: getting to the truth quickly and efficiently. In the second initiative, plaintiffs lawyers in participating states must retain medical experts who have practiced in the same specialty area as the physicians accused of malpractice.
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POPSReforming health care is fiscally conservative
More: Real conservatives should point out that the current proposals are not tough enough on costs - and criticize Obama for that, not for fantasies like a communist takeover or euthanasia program for special needs kids. The Romney-Obama model will require fiscal boundaries to healthcare provision and this will mean a trade-off that will be hard to postpone much longer. We'll get less innovation, and probably some rationing at some point. But that is already happening - the rationing is done by insurance companies. One final thing: most Americans do not want people dying in the streets. If you have guaranteed emergency room care for the uninsured at public expense, you have already effectively socialized medicine. It makes no sense not to bring these people into the insurance system, and to offer less expensive, long-term preventive healthcare. To insist that ideology stand in the way of this piece of compassionate common sense is irresponsible.
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POPS Health Care Trading Cards: Collect 'Em All! Wondering who gets what out of the Democrat Party's push for single-payer, socialized medicine? Keep tabs on all the cash changing hands with this exclusive collection of Health Care Trading Cards™! "What Obama didn’t say is that AARP receives millions in federal funds, and hopes to get even more by becoming a vendor under his plan. In January 2007, NLPC published Special Report documenting taxpayer support for AARP. The study found that federal funding accounted for $83 million, or about 10 percent, of AARP’s then-annual revenue of $878 million." Unaccountable politicians -- who have come out and said they don't give a crap what their constituents think -- will amass more power, further breakdown the firewalls in the Constitution and then walk away. And where will Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid be in ten years, when the rest of us are struggling with a massive, out-of-control, federalized medical system that doesn't give a damn . . .
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POPSLowering health care costs not tied to tort reform More: the second travesty is that the $17.7 million — which he could surely use over the many remaining years of his life — was cut by more than half by Texas law. The award included $6.72 million in economic damages and $11 million for pain and suffering. But the $11 million immediately was reduced to $250,000. Because that’s all Texas law says he can have. Did I mention that health care costs in Texas keep going up, anyway? At age 53, Mr. Fitzgerald can expect another 21 years of life . $250,000 divided by 21 years equals a little less than $12,000 a year. Anyone want to volunteer to have BOTH arms and BOTH legs amputated as the result of somebody else's carelessness and incompentence, in exchange for $12,000 a year? Anyone consider that a reasonable trade-off? Didn't think so...
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POPSChicago Illinois Attorney Lawyers at Cirignani Heller & Harman LLP are experienced to carefully evaluate cases where doctors or nurses failed to take the appropriate measures to diagnose and/or treat their patients.
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POPSChicago Illinois Attorney Law firm Cirignani Heller & Harman LLP also retains medical experts from a variety of fields to help their clients for medical and nursing home related cases.
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POPSChicago Accident Lawyers Attorneys at Woodruff & Johnson have recovered compensations for clients for cases related to driver fatigue, improperly completed log books, improper loading, improper service and maintenance and many more.
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POPSLawyer Miami Florida Law office of Warren P. Gammill provides you with the representation you need for professional malpractice related cases.
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