Just a bit about hypocrisy in the media.
Vanity Fair – 7/29/08:
Seen around LA in the last couple of weeks:
The first image was published in a national magazine with almost no outrage in the press. The second has shown up and has been decried as racist.
But hey, there’s no bias in the media, is there?
To start things off, let me give you a quote from Ronald Reagan’s speech from his first Inauguration:
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.
While it was not healthcare he was addressing (though I can dig up any number of quotes from the early 60s from Reagan against government healthcare), the quote still very much applies. But how, I can hear you asking, does this apply to the title of this post?
The answer to that is very simple. The “elite group” (Congress in this case) is beholden to another group that is one of the key factors that has driven up healthcare costs in this county. That group? Trial Lawyers.
Growing up with a parent in the healthcare industry (my mother is a CCRN), I’ve heard no end of stories about the cost of medical malpractice insurance. One of the major causes for the expense is due to malpractice lawsuits.
Now, before anyone starts trying to put words into my mouth, let me say this: there are many cases where a lawsuit and large judgment are appropriate. Doctors make mistakes, which impacts someone else’s life in a major way. However, in far more cases, the lawsuits are brought against healthcare professionals purely because the lawyers know many of the insurance companies will settle rather than go to trial.
Unfortunately for the American public, far too many members of Congress are beholden to the American Trial Lawyers’ Association. Due to this, any meaningful Tort reform gets tossed to the wayside. After all, they don’t want to endanger their campaign contributions from wealthy lawyers.
What needs to be done in my opinion? Institute a loser-pays civil lawsuit policy. Make it law that if you sue someone and lose the lawsuit, you have to pay their legal costs. This ensures that someone will think hard about whether or not their case warrants bringing suit before doing so. Instead of someone having to decide if it will cost them more to defend against a lawsuit than to settle in every case, they can look at the merit of the claims instead.
Yes, I fully acknowledge this brings up the issue of corporations being able to hire more competent legal teams than John Q. Public who had a doctor amputate the wrong foot. However, a competent lawyer is far more likely to take the case than the neighborhood ambulance chaser when they know there is a solid case rather than just filing in hope of the company settling.
Of course, I have zero hope that we’ll see any meaningful reform in this area. After all, this might endanger the move toward socialized medicine and shifting yet more power from the People to the Government. And I really wish I could say I’m just a cynic in this case.
“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns–or dollars. Take your choice–there is no other–and your time is running out.”
- Francisco D’Anconia
From Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The above quote is from the first section of Atlas Shrugged and ends the speech by Francisco D’Anconia sparked by someone stating money was the root of all evil. The speech itself is one of the pivotal moments in the book and one of the spots where Rand used one of the protagonists to express portions of her personal philosophy.
First and foremost, take the time to read Atlas Shrugged if you haven’t already. It resonates much more than I wish it did with the current time. If you have read it, take the time to re-read it for exactly the same reason.
We are teetering on the brink of the final slide away from the free market and personal liberty. Unfortunately, it appears as if a significant portion of the population in the United States has no desire to hold to their personal liberty, but would rather look to Government to provide for them and take care of all their problems.
Do I see myself as in the same arena as Galt and his associates? No, not really. I rate myself more as a an Eddie Willers than a Hank Rearden. As such, I look around and realize just how much things are going to degrade as the Government drives the lash harder against those who actually drive our economy until such a point that they decide to head to Galt’s Gulch or they simply give out.
But for a lot of people in the US currently, that’s okay. After all, the Government can just pick up the slack. Right?