Why don't Dem leaders stay this...

[purduejake]

in response to talk about needing to drive down costs of health-care by tort reform?

"Instead of protecting the insurance companies and their executives' bonuses, we want to protect the people from the insurance companies! We want reform so that if you are injured in a car accident that's not your fault, the liable insurance company should pay for medical treatment when you need it -- not 3 years later after having to hire an attorney to fight tooth an nail to get justice in this country! We want patients to choose their health care providers -- not their HMOs! We want a patient's bill of rights INSTEAD of a corporate bill of rights! This government needs to become for the people, instead of corporate sponsors!"

WHY is that so hard to say?!? Why wasn't that in their counter-response to the State of the Union? Why won't people publicly challenge this president when people are actually paying attention?!?!?

edit: Nevermind... how many of the Dems are also whores to the health care industry?

[progressiveright]

1. people do say this

in fact, Senator Lieberman, who was the enabler in chief for the iraq invasion, is still the only reason we have the Patient's Bill of Rights.

Couple of things - it's not trial lawyers, it's public defense attorneys. Second, attorneys don't sue people, it's people that sue people (somebody else pointed out that Senator Santorum's wife sued her chiroprachtor for millions of dollars and won), public attorneys fees are high because they are determined by the forces of free market, so any tort reform that is trying to curb the amount of money public defense attorney get from a case goes against conservative ideology, it's blatantly clear that this administration is trying to hurt public lawyers because they donate so much money to the democratic party.

[progressiveright]

2. also

on tort reform

as both Kerry and Edwards pointed out many times, there is a problem of people trying to scam the system by filing stupid ass lawsuits, which can be dealt with by cracking down on frivolous lawsuits and lawyers that file frivolous lawsuits.

There are many pretty inventive solutions out there that deal with the problem, like a recent bill in California sponsored by Arnold where he basically said that in a lawsuit jury needs to differentiate between money that goes to compensate the victim, and the money that is supposed to punish the company that is doing something wrong (that money under Arnold's new bill won't go to the person that filed lawsuit, but it will go to the state), or in Britain - where every time somebody files a lawsuit against a company and loses they have to pay the court fees for the whole proceedings, which discourages frivolous lawsuits in a way.

[Kolesar]

3. We should outlaw frivolous lawsuits against enviros and local governments

Developers and their ilk will sue anybody who tries to stop a development even if the law states that the development is not legal. It is called a slapp suit and only serves to stop citizens' access to the courts.

[progressiveright]

4. lol

that's a good point. corporations sue people all the time as well.