Parasites and Health Care
The parasites in question are trial lawyers, particularly those who specialize in medical malpractice lawsuits. These unsavory ambulance chasers, like personal injury lawyers in general, aggressively pursue potentially lucrative cases through in-your-face TV ads and tasteless roadside billboards. Some even lurk in hospital corridors, shoving business cards into the hands of potential clients and their families.
Why do they behave so distastefully? Because it makes them rich. These kinds of lawyers work for contingency fees, taking a hefty slice of whatever their clients get in a settlement or after a trial. In the end, the lawyers often make more money than their clients. And whose pockets are picked in the process? Mine and yours, of course, through higher medical costs that we all have to pay one way or another. By some estimates, the medical malpractice system adds $200 billion or more per year to the cost of medical care. Much of that money — our money — goes into the pockets of trial lawyers.
Current health care reform proposals may, when finalized, nod in the general direction of malpractice reform, only because the public and opposition politicians have made a stink about it. But it won’t be effective malpractice reform because the Democrats won’t permit that to happen. Why? Money, of course. The trial lawyers contribute huge amounts of their money — really our money, remember — to Democrats to ensure that nothing happens to cut off their flow of ill-gotten gains. And it works.
Most Americans understand that health care costs are way too high, and most want much-needed reform of the current dysfunctional medical malpractice system, which is part of overall tort reform. Some states have enacted variations of tort reform, including limits on the size of awards. Trial lawyers, a crafty crew indeed, carefully select the states and jurisdictions where they file their lawsuits to avoid these limitations.
The only solutions are new federal laws regarding these kinds of lawsuits in federal courts, with as much application to the states as possible. Beyond that, states that have not passed tort reform laws, especially for medical malpractice, should do so.
As long as trial lawyers line the pockets of politicians, overwhelmingly Democrats, with huge amounts of cash, the odds that Congress and the remaining state legislatures will enact meaningful tort reform are very low. As Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in response to a question at a recent town hall meeting, “The reason that tort reform is not in the [health care reform] bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers…. And that is the plain and simple truth.”
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