When speaking about Health Care Reform, did President Obama talk about tort reform? Is that change...?

[dacy17]

we can believe in from President Obama?

How can he be blaming health care costs on anything else? The Democratic Party is full of lawyers, so in order for Mr. Obama to really do health care reform, he would have to go against his base. Do you believe that will ever happen?

In a recent press release, stated the following "Lawsuit Abuse Facts: "

According to a recent Towers Perrin study, the U.S. tort liability system cost each U.S. citizen $721 in 2001 ($205 billion total).
More than 40 percent of doctors reported avoiding prescribing appropriate medication because they knew the drug might be involved in litigation.
Personal injury lawyers walk away with 30-50 percent of any jury award to the plaintiff, plus an additional percentage of the award to cover expenses.
Since its widely used cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol was withdrawn from the market, Bayer is facing more than 8,000 lawsuits. The New York Times notes that at least 6,000 of those lawsuits, however, are being filed by people who did not suffer any side effects whatsoever.
Their web site state these "Fast Facts - Symptoms of Lawsuit Abuse:"

Lawsuit abuse affects all Americans on different levels.
80% of Americans say personal injury attorneys take too much of their clients' winnings.
76% of Americans believe medical liability lawsuits threaten access to quality healthcare for families.
74% of Americans describe medical liability issue as crisis or major problem.
By 61% to 22% margin, Americans say lawsuits against doctors result in wealthy lawyers rather than improved quality of care for patients.
Lawsuit costs passed on to consumers add up to nearly $721 per year for every person in America today.
Because of litigation fears, 79% of doctors said they had ordered more tests than they would based only on professional judgment of what is medically needed.
It takes at least a year to resolve most lawsuits, and delays of three to five years are not uncommon. Unfortunately, injured people with legitimate claims can wait years before their cases go to trial.
An estimated $50 billion per year is spent on unnecessary test procedures designed only to guard doctors and hospitals against malpractice claims.
Almost half of the money spent by physician insurers goes towards defending cases that ultimately are closed without compensation paid to the claimant.
http://headaches.about.com/cs/advocacy/a/lamus_cala.htm

[sylvester37]

The congress, comprising mainly of trial lawyers, have no interest in tort reform, or in other words, cutting their own greedy throats.

[nemausus36]

In a lot of ways, the more things "change" the more they will stay the same.

[danil70]

Tort reform is a Republican ploy to take attention away from the huge profits gouged out of the health care system by pharmaceutical and insurance companies.

[mads]

The elephant is the perfect symbol for Republicans: they never forget, lead each other around by the tail, and think everyone should work for peanuts.

[jocheved]

The elephant is the perfect symbol for Republicans: they never forget, lead each other around by the tail, and think everyone should work for peanuts.

never came up

[jocheved]

I see it the way Obama sees it. There are 2 ways it can go. One way is good and the other is not. The way it is now is not good. Many people dont go to the doctors because they have no insurance and then thier condition gets worse. Now people who have no insurance have to break down and get treated by doctors or hospitals and have to pay for it out of thier pocket or cant pay it at all. Then in most cases there is an outstanding bill that never gets paid. Now that causes the rise in healthcare to make up for all those people who never pay for thier services and at no choice of thier own.They couldnt help it so I dont blame them. This goes on for years and years and health cost keeps rising. Now you have a broken down healthcare system where people are sick and dying with no insurance and many times could have been prevented if they could have seen a doctor. Now also you have many people on welfare trying to take care of thier kids and have the states pay for it all. I could go on and on. This is a huge problem. Now Obama and myself and many others believe that it will cost more up front and save more later to give all people health coverage to in many cases prevent people from dying of an illness that could be prevented. To help all people pay thier bills and that will get rid of all the unpaid bills that the states and the government has to help cover later. It gets rid of a terrible cycle of money not spent well and people suffering for it. The idea of everyone having preventive care will keep people from geting much more expensive health problems in the future which saves money. This will bring healthcare costs down because everyone will have thier services paid for not leaving all these unpaid bills from before and it will be much more efficient.As far as I can tell most people understand that this is correct for the most part.

[amdt57]

Granting that our tort system is unfair an inefficient -- you may not just take it away without putting something in place to ensure health care for all of us and to ensure that doctors take some personal responsibility for their errors.

As it stands now, if you are injured and cannot work you lose your job and therefore the insurance for yourself and your family. How do you get coverage? no national health care so you sue someone for money.

If a doctor or if big pharma makes a mistake resulting in your death or injury, how do you or your heirs get remediation? doctors and corps deny fault and they cover for each other, so how do you get relief? You sue someone for money.

If we had the least tiny bit of confidence that lack of insurance was not the road to bankruptcy; and that ALL medical practitioners were honest and reputable and would take responsibility for their actions, then we can and indeed must consider tort reform.

Until then it is just an excuse for maintaining the status quo in the health care profession. An excuse to do nothing as long as it does not affect you personally.

[jordi]

Tort costs of less than 2% of health care costs can hardly compare with the 30% that is due to health insurance company costs. In any case, Obama is tackling the problem of health care and its enormous costs to the American public in terms of lives lost due to inadequate coverage and the costs that passed on to those with insurance in order to cover health care costs for the people who have no insurance.

[matyas]

First of all, Obama is not going to bring in universal healthcare. He wants to make insurance more available to all.

Second, of course universal health-cover sucks. That is why we in Western Europe have it. We think, hmm, our healthcare system sucks. I know, lets keep it. I guess that is the same with Japan and Canada as well.

FACT - the USA spends more on healthcare PER PERSON than any other nation on the planet.

FACT - the US has higher death rates for kids aged under five than western European countries with universal health coverage.

That means that a dead American four year old would have had a better chance of life if they were born in Canada, France, Cuba, Germany, Japan etc, all of which have universal health coverage.

Cost are high in the US in part due to the private system. One reason is that payouts are high as a result as once you have a mistake made in your care, any financial recompense has to take into account that your insurance premiums will be higher as a result and you may not even get cover for future healthcare. This results in large payouts, which means that charges have to go up to fund the insurance for doctors etc.