Styles

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Oh, I think we know our customer well enough to know he probably WILL be...

Brings a tear to my eye. I would reactivate Jeff Jarrett, God as a celebration if screen names weren't frozen.

Ok, I've signed up! I always join public leagues and it's no fun since everyone stops playing by August so hopefully you guys will be more fun. The EL KABONG~! Slapnuts are going all the way!

Arnold doesn't want to face the public backlash on this issue. He is obviously very protected in his appearences, and he would have to take a controversial stand on this issue and face the national media. He wants to keep a low profile...

I could practically guarentee that they would go down as part of a compromise if such a malpractice limit ever passes. It's a nasty situation, but Edwards is the one running and has directly benefited from the system and a vote for him, I feel is a vote for the trial lawyers. I'm not saying things would be all that different with Bush still in power (but as previously cited, not from any lack of effort on his part, there is no denying the trial lawyer special interest presence is enormous in Congress), but at least it we would not have a posterchild for the problem in power. Again, I have refrained from any personal attacks on Edward's character. I'm sure he's a decent guy with some good ideas, but his past proceeds him and I am simply stating that if he were to become the nominee he would lose on a account of this issue. But this is really all moot because Kerry basically has it wrapped up...

I can't avoid the hypocracy. On page 2, you state that helping people is better than hurting people. But you support the plan that hurts people over the plan that helps the people needing helped. I think by limiting trial lawyers to 250,000 on malpractice lawsuits (which is a lot of money for most normal people) that will result in immediate benefits to patients in the form of more choices and lower premiums is a better situation than one where premiums rise and choices decline as a result of the current free for all system. Doctors being ruined is a little different than limitng lawyers to "a lot" of money instead of "obscene" money, and is much greater for the PUBLIC GOOD. This is not just the right thing for doctors it is the right thing for the American Public who's lives will be positively effected if anything is ever done.

By, George, I think he's got it! But hold on a second! You don't like the lawyers because they make life difficult on doctors. So rather than support the plan that helps doctors, you support the plan that makes life difficult on lawyers. That's not any less destructive. AND, it does nothing to stop the flow of frivilous lawsuits or phony malpractice suits. It simply means less profit is being generated from each one. Which could, in theory, increase the number of phony malpractice suits that doctors face. Read my edit. Poor lawyers, only 250,000 per claim, they'll starve!

By, George, I think he's got it! EDIT: Lawyers need to be controlled. If a cap is put on payouts, it becomes less appealing for lawyers to chase ambulences since they can't get 30 million a pop anymore, as a result doctor's have more security, their insurance goes down, more doctors enrole in medical school and patience have more choices and lower costs. Sounds good to me.

I apologize to Tyler, Jobber you can add your name before his. We clear now?

I never said this. I am offended by the WAY Edwards obtained his fortune and think it's downright laughable that he tries to paint himself as looking out for common Americans when in reality he's hurt more common Americans and leeched off others to put himself in his position. I have not changed my positions or arguments at all, so please don't distort my words.

By the way, I like how you've conveniantly passed the buck to Bush, completely avoiding Edwards. This is not an issue of "well, wait what about what he did..." No, I'm talking about Edwards and why I will not vote for him. Instead of defending him, you're simply diverting attention to another person. So I can answer all your "but what about Bush..." related comments very simply. I do not approve of Edwards for the aforementioned reasons, Bush is not Edwards. That was easy.

Irrelevant. Bush making money from "shady practices" is hearsay, and is ILLEGAL. Those that have been found out are being held accountable. Edward's past is not disbuted whatsoever, and the problem is, it's NOT illegal. So he's not going to go after his own collegues, when legally they're not doing anything wrong.

He has proposed a "Three Strikes & You're Out" program for attorneys filing frivolous lawsuits. Three frivilous cases would suspend an attorney from filing suit for the next decade. He has proposed that lawyers swear that they have another medical professional willing to testify in court that there's actual malpractice at work. This is more than saying he'll "do something." Stop trying to smear. So, let's see. If Edwards made TWENTY THREE MILLION in a record claim, and then BROKE that record with a THIRTY MILLION dollar payout....that's 2 strikes, and almost 60 million dollars. Bullshit. Bush's cap is a solution, Edward's is comically useless...

It has to pass a Congress full of... Trial lawyers. Just because you WANT it doesn't mean it'll happen. -=Mike Right. It's funny, for all the times the left like's to call him "King George", they seem to conveniantly forget he can't just magically pass laws. Proposing a bill is THE MOST HE CAN CONSTITUTIONALY DO. Special interests in Congress are what is blocking it. And I never said Edwards was less than human. I've been very clear that he has made his money legally, but I will not allow him to use that money to attain the presidency. It's like...if someone made all his money as a crime boss selling drugs, and now that he's out he's using his millions to run his campaign, and he says he'll fight the drug war. It's completly transparent and insincere. (And before Tyler jumps on me about comparing Edwards to a drug dealer or criminal I'M NOT, it was just the only stupid anaolgy I could think of...)

Because unlike Edwards he is not a trial lawyer.

Proposed a helpful plan, that like most bills is being moved slowly through Congress. That's more than Edwards has done, or even proposed to do...

I believe lawsuits have a much more pernicious influence on American life. Corporate accountability IS being accounted for, the criminals are being put on trial once found out about. There are NO rules for the trial lawyers who can do whatever they want basically...

Another article on Bush's proposal. He wants to limit the lawsuits to 250,000. Now what person needs more than that? Oh, wait, what would the trial lawyers get? John Edwards is proposing nothing of the sort. Yeah, he'll "do something..." Bush seeks to contain 'junk' medical lawsuits By Joseph Curl THE WASHINGTON TIMES President Bush yesterday renewed his call to contain "frivolous" malpractice lawsuits that he says are driving up health care costs. His speech in Little Rock, Ark., was a demonstration of the power of the bully pulpit in an election year: Traveling to the home state of one potential Democratic rival, Wesley Clark, Mr. Bush criticized trial lawyers — the former profession of another rival, Sen. John Edwards — while focusing on the key issue of health care. Speaking to doctors and staff at Little Rock's Baptist Health Medical Center, the president called on Congress to pass his proposal to limit medical malpractice lawsuits to $250,000 in order to keep down the cost of health care. "We got too many darn lawsuits, too many frivolous and junk lawsuits, that are affecting people," Mr. Bush said. "People [are] just filing these lawsuits right and left, and it's running up the costs." Noting that medical liability premiums for Arkansas physicians rose more than 150 percent last year — which has driven some doctors out of the state — the president said his plan would reserve punitive damages for cases in which they were justified and limit them to "reasonable amounts." "See, lawsuits not only drive up premiums, which drives up the cost to the patient or the employer of the patient, but lawsuits cause docs to practice medicine in an expensive way in order to protect themselves in the courthouse," he said. "Ninety percent of Arkansas doctors say the fear of lawsuits [has] caused them to do unnecessary procedures," the president said, and such "defensive medicine" drives up the government's health care costs by $28 billion a year. Mr. Bush, who has said repeatedly that he is not ready to begin running for re-election but has made several recent stops that smack of campaign politics, chose Arkansas because "it's a national problem that requires a national solution, and the president takes this message everywhere," said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan. The problem, however, is far worse in nearly a dozen other states. But Mr. Bush's stop gave him a chance to upstage the state's home candidate, Mr. Clark, and criticize another contender, Mr. Edwards. The senator from North Carolina, who has moved up in the polls for today's New Hampshire primary after finishing a surprisingly strong second in Iowa, became a multimillionaire as one of the country's most successful personal injury lawyers, winning huge damage awards against corporations and hospitals on behalf of individuals. "The health care system looks like a giant lottery. That's what it looks like these days because of these lawsuits. And somehow, the trial lawyers always hold the winning ticket. Lawyers walk away with up to 40 percent — 40 percent — of every settlement and verdict, which adds up to billions of costs, billions of unnecessary costs," said Mr. Bush, who never mentioned either Democrat by name. The Clark campaign had no comment about Mr. Bush's visit; a spokesman for Mr. Edwards did not return phone calls. Democrats, including Mr. Edwards, warn that Mr. Bush's proposed cap on awards would prevent seriously injured patients from getting fair compensation and would not guarantee doctors malpractice insurance at a fair price. Mr. Bush is standing "with his insider friends in the insurance industry and standing against seriously injured children and families," Mr. Edwards said last year when the president visited Pennsylvania to deliver a speech on the topic. Democratic lawmakers in the Senate last year thwarted Mr. Bush's plan to limit noneconomic damage awards — mostly for "pain and suffering" — to $250,000. The proposal also would reduce lawyers' fees and curtail patients' ability to file suit over old cases. Mr. Bush noted the case of Dr. Sara McBee, a Fayetteville, Ark., practitioner who was delivering between 80 and 100 babies a year until her insurance premiums more than doubled in 2002. "Dr. McBee has stopped delivering babies as a direct result of too many junk lawsuits. And that's not right. That's not right," Mr. Bush said. "We can have balance in our society when it comes to having a good legal system and a good medical system. It's not that way today. The pendulum has swung way, way too far," he said to applause.

DID YOU READ THE AP ARTICLE?!?!! And as Mike said, Edwards has NO CHOICE but to publicly denounce the practices of trial laywers because he knows it's his achillies heel. I don't buy it for a second either, and neither should you...

Limiting malpractice payouts?! WOW! What a concept! But then John Edwards and his buddies could only leach and make like TWENTY MILLION instead of thirty, we couldn't have that...

And, yeah Bush IS trying to do something about it: Bush said health care costs are rising partly because of "too many darn lawsuits. "We need medical liability reform to make sure medicine is affordable and available." Bush Pushes Malpractice Award Cap MARK SHERMAN Associated Press LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - President Bush blamed trial lawyers and Senate Democrats Monday for blocking his proposal to limit medical malpractice awards, kicking off a week that will take him to three states important to his re-election chances. Bush escaped snowy Washington for relatively balmy Little Rock, where he told a friendly crowd of medical workers at the Baptist Health Medical Center that legislation to cap jury awards would help rein in rising health care costs. "The problem is some in the United States Senate don't see it that way," Bush said. Senate Democrats derailed the bill last year, arguing that the legislation would benefit insurers, not patients. "The health care system looks like a giant lottery, that's what it looks like these days with these lawsuits, and somehow the trial lawyers always hold the winning ticket," Bush said. That could be seen as a jab at Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards of North Carolina, who is a senator and a trial lawyer. Edwards finished second in the Iowa caucuses last week. Edwards' spokesman Roger Salazar said, "The difference between George Bush and John Edwards is that while Bush sides with his insider friends in 'big insurance,' Edwards trusts regular Americans who serve on juries to do what's right for children and families." The issue also allowed Bush to frame an argument that pits doctors, hospitals and insurers - strong supporters of the administration - against trial lawyers, who generally support Democrats. Legislation that passed the House but not the Senate last year would limit the pain and suffering portion of malpractice awards to $250,000, and punitive damages to either the same amount or twice the patient's actual financial loss. The bill, intended to supersede state laws, also would curtail lawyers' fees and patients' ability to file suit over old cases. Bush chose Arkansas because the state last year enacted a tort reform law, aides said. The state's two Democratic senators, Blanche Lincoln and David Pryor, opposed the federal legislation, though Bush mentioned neither by name. The 2004 campaign also is a factor in Bush's travel schedule. The president narrowly carried Arkansas in 2000. He will travel on Thursday to New Hampshire, which he also won by a small margin, and on Saturday to Pennsylvania, which he narrowly lost four years ago. With 43 million Americans uninsured, Bush offered several ideas for confronting the issue - most of them repackaged ideas he had previously advocated. Faced with record budget deficits, Bush chose measures that would require little government spending. They include: _Setting medical malpractice limits; _Helping small businesses band together to negotiate for lower insurance rates; _Offering refundable tax credits to help low-income Americans buy health insurance; _Creating tax incentives to encourage the use of health savings accounts, which would let people save money for future medical expenses tax-free; _Harnessing medical technology to prevent medical errors. Both sides have produced studies and statistics to back their arguments. On Monday, Bush said soaring insurance premiums are leading doctors to practice medicine defensively, which he said drives up government's health care costs by $28 billion a year. Bush said health care costs are rising partly because of "too many darn lawsuits. "We need medical liability reform to make sure medicine is affordable and available." Last year, however, Congress' General Accounting Office said it found no conclusive link between rising insurance premiums and doctors quitting their practices. The investigators also didn't find a connection between caps on damage awards and slower growth in premiums and payments by insurance companies.

Tyler, what you're missing is the hypocricy of it all! The man is only calling for reform AFTER he's made his MILLIONS from it. He's not donating all the money he won to help the sick, or donating it to medical schools, he's using the ruined lives of people to fund his presidential campaign. Here's an article I found that gives you some examples of the problem: Soaring Malpractice Premiums Bleed Doctors, Rob Consumers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Vicki Lankarge -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance premiums are wreaking havoc in communities throughout the United States. In Beaumont, Texas, for example, the Texas Medical Liability Trust has increased its medical liability rates for all specialists a whopping 120 percent since 1999. It has become so bad in Beaumont that the Texas Medical Liability Insurance Association--the insurer of last resort for doctors with previous malpractice claims against them--is charging individual neurosurgeons upwards of $176,000 a year for a policy that caps malpractice payments at $1 million per occurrence with an overall total cap of $3 million per policy year. The result? There is only one practicing neurosurgeon left in Beaumont. "This is a scary thing," says Kim Ross, vice president of the Texas Medical Association. "What if a patient has a car wreck, needs a neurosurgeon, and there's none available? It's an hour to Houston. That 'golden hour' [when treatment is most beneficial] is lost." It's not any better in Pennsylvania, where 72 percent of doctors polled by the Pennsylvania Medical Society say they have deferred purchasing new equipment or hiring new staff due to sudden, steep increases in their medical malpractice insurance premiums. After absorbing increases between 21 and 60 percent for those premiums in 2001, doctors fear their rates in 2002 could jump another 70 percent. The society says the hefty sums awarded in malpractice lawsuits are driving doctors' medical liability premiums through the roof. Pennsylvania ranks second among states in terms of total payouts for medical litigation; New York is No. 1. (See accompanying chart.) "The numbers are off the charts," says Dr. Howard Richter, the Pennsylvania Medical Society's president. "Combined judgments and settlements for fiscal year 2000 amounted to $352 million--roughly $30 per state resident and nearly 10 percent of the U.S. total." Jump in Jury Awards Jury awards for medical malpractice claims jumped 76 percent from 1996 to 1999, according to the latest edition of "Current Award Trends in Personal Injury" by Jury Verdict Research. As a result, many doctors and patient advocates in states that don't have laws to limit the dollar amount of jury awards fear that increasingly large verdicts threaten their health care system by driving up medical malpractice insurance premiums. To fend off litigation and cope with steep premiums, doctors ultimately are being forced to take defensive measures, such as: Practicing defensive medicine by ordering additional, sometimes unnecessary, medical tests. Insurers may be reluctant to pay for them, but doctors want them in order to protect themselves from lawsuits. According to the Quarterly Journal of Economics, such "defensive medicine" adds $50 billion per year to the nation's overall health care spending. Deferring the hiring of new staff, or even downsizing staff, sparking patient backlogs and making it difficult for patients to get timely appointments. Ceasing to practice certain high-risk specialties, such as obstetricians/gynecologists who stop delivering babies because the threat of patient litigation is so high. Richter cites one obstetrics/gynecology group where insurance premiums nearly tripled in 2001 to $1 million. When two of their seven physicians stopped delivering babies, their rates were cut in half. Moving their practices to regions with lower medical malpractice insurance costs, or stopping the practice of medicine altogether. Regions with high liability costs may have difficulty attracting new doctors, creating a lack of consumer choice of physicians. Situation Critical in Pennsylvania Pennsylvania is one state reeling from the effects of the rise in jury awards for medical malpractice claims. Although the state does cap punitive damages, it does not limit "non-economic" jury awards, including damages assessed by juries for "pain and suffering," by far the most common type of jury award. In 2000, Pennsylvania's doctors and other health care practitioners paid $372 million in total lawsuit judgments, according to research conducted by the state's medical society. That figure ranks second only to New York's approximately $633 million in aggregate medical malpractice lawsuit judgments in 2000. As a result of Pennsylvania's liability crisis, patients are suffering, according to the Pennsylvania Medical Society. A recent survey of the society's member doctors discovered that more than 90 percent of them are practicing defensive medicine to avoid lawsuits. There seems to be no limit to the skyrocketing jury awards, says Pennsylvania Medical CAT Fund Director John Reed. "There used to be a gentleman's agreement that lawyers wouldn't go after an award larger than a physician's liability coverage," he says. "Now the gloves are off." But trial lawyers argue that frivolous lawsuits and large jury awards are not to blame for the health care crisis in Pennsylvania--or any other state. "Medical error is the 8th largest killer in the United States," says Mark Phenicie, legislative counsel for Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers. "Juries award large medical malpractice settlements in only the most egregious cases. These kinds of lawsuits are not frivolous. If there wasn't a malpractice that happened initially, there wouldn't be a malpractice case or malpractice verdict." The consequences of the take-no-prisoners approach to jury awards has caused malpractice insurance premiums to shoot up, particularly in the Philadelphia area, where Reed says trial lawyers are deeply entrenched and juries generous. The average annual practice insurance premium for a Pennsylvania physician in 1998 was about $35,000, according to the American Medical Association; Reed says a Philadelphia-area obstetrician is now paying upward of $87,000. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vicki Lankarge writes for insure.com, the Consumer Insurance Guide. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good for you. I would say you're not in position to have a baby but I have my doubts. Medical schools have extremely low enrollment for OB/GYN which is the main area the lawsuits kick in (i.e. birth defects which are usually just BAD GENESE and not the fault of the doctor...but nothing stops a lawyer from getting the patient to sue. Even if the doctor is perfectly innocent, just the court costs alone to defend himself or even settle are way too high and place such an unescesarry burden. Surgeries on vital organs like heart and brain are in the same position, this is RISKY business, and it's not ALWAYS going to go right. I don't see why this gives John Edwards the right to bankrupt people out of THIRTY MILLION PER CLAIM. It's insane and frivelous and needs to be controlled.

#1: Doctors make their money helping people, trial laywers make OBSCENE money hurting people. #2: Of course not. Again, I am not saying he is not a bad person or does not hold good positions. But I can not ignore and will not support what made him so wealthy. Lawsuits are out of control in this country and something needs to be done.