Wednesday, September 29, 2004

 

Tort Reform Requires Majorities

Accuracy in Media reports today on the successes of trial lawyers in bringing suits against, well, everybody. At the end, read the discussion about how John Edwards led a malpractice crisis in North Carolina, resulting in decreased neurosurgery and obstetrics services, and then listen to his speeches on improving access to healthcare.

A West Virginia obstetrician is suing the West Virginia Trial Lawyers Association for recklessly training its members in suing physicians. Interesting reading.

Hugh Hewitt writes this week about the Senate races. Majorities matter, majorities matter, and this year the Democrats must lose for us to get Tort Reform in place. (Also to keep pressure on people who decapitate civilians on videotape...) Give, give, give, you can be certain your friends in the American Trial Lawyers Association are writing $2000 checks to everyone they support.

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

 

States pursuing tort reform

Betsy's page blog is a good one. She reports today on four states trying to limit awards. Take a look. Looks like it's Florida, Nevada, Oregon, and Wyoming. The lawyers are pulling off the gloves. My state, Colorado, seems to be in the safe zone for patient access. Wyoming, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Florida, Texas, and numerous others are in severe crisis (look at the map in the Arizona article.)

I heard a guy say, "Well that guy in Illinois who was bankrupted by a malpractice suit was stupid. He only carried one million in coverage, he should have known better.
Reality check! Some OB-GYBN's pay $240,000, per year, for one million in coverage and make about $200K/year after expenses. Hm, let me think. Would I like to LOSE $40,000 per year so I could have 2 mill in coverage? Docs are leaving when they can, abandoning the poor and needy or giving up procedures or obstetrics. I really hope my daughter in Illinois doesn't need an obstetrician!

Friday, September 24, 2004

 

Colorado's effort to become irrelevant politically

Colorado is trying desperately to take itself out of consideration in national politics. How? By proposing to split its electoral votes by the proportion of popular votes in the State. This superficially and emotionally appealing concept falls apart upon any kind of careful analysis.

For a nice concise history and explanation of the Electoral College, look here.

Colorado being a smaller, more rural state has a slightly greater say per capita in Presidential elections than larger states like New York, California, or Texas. For that reason, presidential candidates take us seriously enough to actually visit here. If we split the votes, one thing we can be sure of: we will never again get a nickel's worth of visits or campaign information. Why would Kerry spend a nickel here to get five instead of four votes? Why would Bush stop here during a campaign? We will disappear.

The Electoral College system has worked beautifully for hundreds of years. It stabilizes the two party system. It balances the need for popular vote and regional representation in a complex nation.

And one thing the populists forget. Remember 2000? Can you imagine the national chaos if we had direct popular elections and the candidates had had to bring their armies of lawyers to all 50 states to contest all of the results in all of the counties in the country? It makes me wonder if the opponents of the Electoral College are really anarchists who want to take us down. There are people like that out there. Or, alternatively, perhaps it is a bunch of underemployed attorneys?

The Electoral College has provided stability to this country for over 200 years. Like the division in Congress between population (the House) and region (the Senate), it has been an effective compromise for the Executive branch. It prevents a few large population centers from totally dominating political thought in this huge and diverse nation. I can't imagine why Colorado would want to unilaterally take itself out of the debate for the Presidency of the United States and I hope you will vote against this ill-considered proposal.

Thursday, September 23, 2004

 

Text of Alawi's address to Congress

Prime Minister Alawi of Iraq gave a speech to Congress. Kerry called it "putting the best face on" a bad situation.

After Rathergate, I am not certain where to turn for accurate information on Iraq. There are Blogs with information completely different from what I hear on the news.

Here's a sample thought. Alawi says there were one million Iraqi's murdered by Hussein's gang. That's about 50,000 per year. The estimates I've seen of Iraqi deaths since the US invaded are between 10,000 and 30,000 (the higher estimates include everyone, the terrorists as well as the "women and children".) So taking the higher estimate, have we killed 30,000, or have we SAVED 20,000? And even if the numbers were closer, are the victims of the war more or less likely to be innocent than the women and children murdered as political opponents of Hussein?

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

 

Text of Bush's speech to UN

Here is the text to Bush's speech to UN. Sometimes these speeches come and go and don't get reported, or they just show a sound bite or two. I'd encourage you to go to Google or another search site and find the text; it just takes a few minutes to read.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

 

Iraqis on the Web

Take a look at this website. Omar and Ali write about their country, their wish for freedom, their take on Islam and Peace.

Monday, September 20, 2004

 

More Iraq stories

Several interesting Iraq stories. First is by a British writer, who surprisingly writes that the news from Iraq contains many positive points.

Next is a pretty funny movie clip.

Next is a link to ongoing military discussions. This site analyzes the claims being made and is evenhanded; it criticizes everyone's points. These guys bring in actual numbers and analysis rather than hysterical "Bush lied" or "Kerry is an idiot" statements. One surprise: Iraq does not actually seem to be getting worse, according to casualty figures. (look in the list for Iraq part 1 and part 2.) When you listen to "Two more American soldiers died today" day after day, it may sound like things are getting worse, but the number of deaths per month is NOT going up.

Here is an interesting analysis of Israel's fight for survival as a democracy and what it might imply for the United States.

So what do I think? We could wait for the cows to come home before "old europe" would help us. We suffered the worst attack in over 100 years on our soil with more deaths than Pearl Harbor. We had intelligence that the world agreed upon. Sadam was paying people to send their children out wearing bombs; he was a terrorist. While with the advantage of hindsight things might have been done differently, I supported and continue to support the war in Iraq.

By the way, I've been reading some interesting books about WWII and Korea. The US basically rebuilt Europe, Japan, and South Korea in a few years, and all have relatively functional democracies. Douglas Maccarther was the substitute emperor in Japan for a number of years and pushed through reforms on his personality alone. Germany was a mess, with hyperinflation and a history of military dictatorships. Korea was divided and war-torn with no history of democracy at all. We in the US can be proud of our successes. It is well worth trying in Iraq, it is not unprecedented, it can work. One year is pretty fast for what has happened there.

And for those who say that democracy cannot exist with Islam, let me say Turkey, Indonesia. Both are a ways from our idea of democracy, but they do elect their leaders. Pakistan and India also have large muslim populations and have made positive strides. Don't be a racist and refuse to give people a chance.




Monday, September 13, 2004

 

Another malpractice story to chill the bones

Judges in Arizona have found that a radiologist screening tuberculosis chest X-rays might have to call each patient that has any kind of abnormality. Amazing.

That might sound reasonable to a lay person, but it is a breathtaking expansion of what the doctor-patient relationship has always been. This doc sent a report detailing his findings, which is what he should have done. But that apparently was just not enough for the Arizona judges who think he should have to call each of the sixty patients, each day, he sees xrays on and establish a doctor-patient relationship with them, even though he'll probably never see them face to face. No liability for the people who got the report and should have acted on it--their pockets aren't deep enough to pay the lawyer's bills, I guess.

 

Another Rather Memo on line!

Take a look at this memo, looks more reliable than Rather's. Also, note farther down in the discussion, a list of Dan's sponsors! Perhaps they have more clout than letters to CBS.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

 

Arnold's Speech

Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a barnburner of a speech last night. One of my favorite parts:

If you believe that government should be accountable to the people, not the people to the government...then you are a Republican! If you believe a person should be treated as an individual, not as a member of an interest group... then you are a Republican! If you believe your family knows how to spend your money better than the government does... then you are a Republican! If you believe our educational system should be held accountable for the progress of our children ... then you are a Republican! If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope of democracy in the world ... then you are a Republican! And, ladies and gentlemen ...if you believe we must be fierce and relentless and terminate terrorism ... then you are a Republican!
There is another way you can tell you're a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people ... and faith in the U.S. economy. To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: "Don't be economic girlie men!

For the whole speech, go here.

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