[HT:JW].
In August, former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Committee Chairman Dr. Howard Dean made a telling statement when he answered a question at a Congressional town hall meeting about the lack of medical liability reform in the current health care reform proposals. Dean responded,
"The reason that tort reform is not in the bill is because the people that wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth."
- Television advertisements soliciting plaintiffs for medical malpractice lawsuits increased from about 10,150 ads in 2004 to more than 156,000 ads in 2008 -- nearly a 1,400 percent increase in four years.
- Spending for these ads increased from $3.8 million to nearly $62 million during this time period -- a 1,300 percent increase in 2008-adjusted dollars.
Lawsuits are ultimately a business driven by the plaintiffs' bar, and when you see the marketing of medical malpractice lawsuits exploding like this, it tells you that these lawsuits are a growing sector within the larger lawsuit industry.
This new evidence of growth in plaintiffs' lawyer medical malpractice lawsuits comes amid an increased focus on medical liability reform -- or lack thereof -- in the larger health care reform debate.
It is yet another piece of evidence that we need meaningful medical liability reform as a key ingredient of any workable health care reform package.
[Yet not one of the Democrat proposals contain any degree of tort reform.]
READ MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment