Healthcare Ownership: BushWorld's Delusion to Curb Healthcare Costs

by Terry B. Brauer

OpEdNews.com

Medical malpractice liability tort reform is one of President Bush's favorite vehicles for controlling healthcare costs. It won't. The President has known or should have known that this is a red herring for at least two years. Nevertheless, he invariably trumpets the theme at every campaign stop and it will become part of his healthcare ownership pitch, which also includes health savings accounts, during the GOP Convention. Part of the duties of this ownership will be to parrot disinformation supported by distorted and massaged data courtesy of healthcare special interests. Another part of healthcare ownership will be to voluntarily abdicate legal remedies. Part of his sell will include convincing healthcare consumers that they are on a level playing field with HMOs, physicians, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. The theme and the strategy are delusional.  

Insurance cost escalation for malpractice liability, property, and auto stem from the same source --- poor returns on insurers' market investments, mismanagement, and greed. Healthcare providers should purge their ranks of incompetent and impaired offenders (like the physician recently dropped by Vice President Cheney for narcotics addiction), use technology to reduce medical errors, and train staff to be more diligent in the care of patients. More Americans are killed and injured annually because of medical malpractice and negligence than were killed and injured during our entire decade in Vietnam. Federal and state medical liability caps establish disincentives to quality care.

President Bush frequently excites his audiences at campaign stops with talk of 'frivolous lawsuits' and 'junk lawsuits'. There is nothing junk about patients dying of West Nile Virus while undergoing dialysis or frivolous about a physician who rationalizes repairing a healthy artery while leaving the defective artery unattended by explaining that the patient has an 'unusual anatomy'.