democracyforcalifornia.com

Yes. Why couldn't Edwards be a decent southern boy and ask his Pa's friends to buy him an oil company.

Karlo, I had information on the cases Edwards won. One was a class actions suit. He wouldn't settle and he won an awesome case for the people. I know I have it somewhere. Dang, I wish I could find it.

Yes he won it. You and I pay for it with higher premiums.
you might just want to see what the average payout to the individual members of the suit received and contrast it to what Edwards received. I guarentee it was considerably higher. I don't have a problem with him earning the money, but under the "rich are evil thieves" ideas of your side of the aisle, doesn't that make Edwards evil?

Personally, I would be for completely scrapping our current justice system and recreating it on a level playing field where nobody could pay for a lawyer. I find the idea that people can pay for superior legal representation repulsive. Let's have government-subsidized attorneys defend both the bum in court for vagrancy and the CEO of Halliburton. Then we might really have "equality before the law." As for the attacks on Edwards, I find it interesting that no one's complaining of politicians use of lawyers. If Cheney and Bush are so against lawyers, can we assume that they did not make use of lawyers when they were running their businesses prior to taking office? To Edwards credit, he was, to the best of my knowledge, defending quite a few ordinary people against the perfidy of big money instead of defending some oil company's right to emit carcinogenic toxins in poor neighborhoods.

Yeah, Karlo, that's basically what 'trial lawyers' do. When they work for corporations, they're called 'corporate lawyers' or if they specialize in trial work, 'corporate litigators'. Trial lawyers are the ones who have real people for clients, not corporations.

delftsman3: He got rich taking a third of the judgment--that's standard. But without these guys standing up for us there would be no judgment. I've been there and I don't have a problem with that as a general rule (there are exceptions).

Your characterization of us it typical--and typically wrong. We don't hate the rich as a class, only the exploiters, the manipulators, and the greedy. The problem is, most of the rich are one or the other when they're not all three--that's how they got rich in the first place.

If you're pissed about your premiums (insurance, I assume), why don't you get mad at the people who cut the corners that caused the accident just so they could make a few extra bucks off consumers? Why don't you get mad at the lazy corporations who can't be bothered to test sufficiently, who hide negative results and sell the defective product anyway even when they know it's going to cause injury, illness and some deaths? Why don't you get mad at them? They're the ones responsible, not the poor bastard who got hurt. It was their decisions that caused the problem. Start blaming the people who are actually responsible.

I'm pissed off that OB/GYN's almost can't afford to practice anymore because they can't afford the malprctice insurence anymore, leading to loss of good quality healthcare to pregnant women. I know of two such doctors personally...they had NEVER had a claim against them, yet in the last five years, their malpractice insurence had climbed to over $35,ooo a MONTH, forcing them to leave their profession. Two less dedicated, proficiant, professionals to care for those real people you care so much about. The Cardiologists are getting to the same point. As for Neurologists...you ever wonder why any type of brain surgery is so expensive? It's ALWAYS risky surgery, and you don't have to make any mistakes for a jury to award huge settlements when an outcome is bad... I won't even go into what litigation protection adds to the cost of developing a new drug.

There have been times when corporations have been at fault in selling defective products, that can't be denied, but the vast majority of companies don't for the best reason of all, it's bad for business. When Ford built the Pinto, and it was later found to be knowingly defective, it lost huge market share that it's only now regaining, and ALL other cars are more expensive because of Ford's mistake. The consumer always pays the price in the end.

And Lawyers,by definition, are manipulative and exploitive, THATS their job, to manipulate a jury to see their clients side by exploiting anything that will cause that jury to see that side....Greedy is dependent on what a service is worth to the parties involved, Edwards earned his money at a preagreed rate...but even talent agents only take 10%, and they're the stereotype of greed.

delftsman3: You're still getting pissed at the wrong people.

#1: As the article said, the claims of outrageous destruction of the medical profession by malpractice lawsuits are at best massively overblown and at worst mythological. The numbers don't support the claims.

#2: Have you asked yourself why the insurance companies don't give lower rates to doctors with clean records? They do it with automobile policies and it would make sense to do it here. But they don't. They're exploiting the hysteria over imaginary giant lawsuits that largely don't exist because they know doctors are trapped--they have to have the insurance or they can't practice. Check out the profit statements of medical insurers if you don't believe me. They're obscene.

#3: The issue of touchy and dangerous surgery like neurology, cardiology and obstetrics is a muddier situation. OOH, the insurers have legitimate concerns; otoh, they've blown those concerns out of all proportion to the realities in order to inflate their profits. I think the answer has to be regulation of medical insurers to make sure their premium hikes are justified.

Doctors are getting ripped off like crazy but instead of blaming the insurance company that's doing it, they're blaming this mythology that the insurance industry has done everything in its power to promulgate.

#4: I'm aware of what lawyers do and I'm certainly not going to deny there are excesses and shady dealings, but study after study shows what the PA study showed--that the numbers are nowhere near what 'reform' proponents are claiming, and that the 'impact' on rates is just an excuse insurance companies use to raise them.

You're being conned, Doctor (I assume you are one from the way you talk). It's a scam by corporations that are using your very real plight as an excuse to protect their own asses and cut their responsibilities for poor decisions to a minimum because they know the public won't buy it otherwise--that's why the medical argument, bogus as it is, is front-and-center--and by insurance companies protecting fat profits. It's no more complicated than that.

Insurance companies are, indeed a part of the problem...once they got involved with medical decision making, the costs spiraled astronomically, but profit gouging is only a small part of the problem.

The costs accrued aren't only in the judgements themselves. All it takes is ONE large payout for doctors to start doing CYA tests/procedures to ensure that even the remotest possibility is covered in case of a later bad result. This results in higher costs for procedures that may otherwise not be needed. They are performed for legal reasons, not medical.

Here's the perspective of a Med student I know...he has some ideas, not all of which I agree with, to lower the costs of health care.
Overall he has a pretty good grasp of the sitution IMHO
http://bloodletting.blog-city.com/read/819697.htm

This is changing the subject a bit, but I've read in two places now that U.S. taxpayers pay MORE in taxes than citizens of any other country. This would mean that we pay more for our expensive system (in which the average person can't afford to see a doctor) than the Swedes or Ozzies pay for their FREE system. Is this possibly true?

Um Karlo, Swedish residents pay more than 70% income tax,once they get above poverty level, don't know what the Ozzie rate is. How about links to where you read that we pay more? We do pay a lot more in taxes than most people realize, but not necesarily in income taxes; it's all the "hidden" taxes that add up.(gasoline,sales,phone use,taxes hidden in the price of consumer goods,etc)

My Uncle in the Netherlands pays 73% income tax. And he can't just see a doctor as the "free" health system is just "we'll get to you in time", just as the Canadian system is. He needed a coronary bypass; they told him they could get him into a specialist to confirm the need in about six weeks (required to shedule surgury), and the surgury itself might take 6 or 7 months to schedule. He came to the States with his preliminary test results and was admitted that day and received a triple bypass the next day. BTW, it was payed for by the Dutch National Health system...don't know HOW he pulled that one off. LOL

Above, I meant to say more in taxes that go to cover health care. I'm aware that U.S. taxpayers don't pay more in taxes overall.

The Ozzie overall rate is more than the U.S. one as well, somewhere between 35% to 45% for most people I believe.

For comparison, it seems the UK rate (for "National Insurance", which in theory covers a basic pension and healthcare, but in practice all the money is spent on the NHS) is 22%, in addition to income tax at between 10 and 40% and a sales tax ("VAT") of 17.5%. In exchange, you get an extremely poor level of care, often having to wait several years for even the most basic procedures - not to mention sometimes waiting a full day in the ER to be treated!