Justice requires open courts, but Bush touts “The Corporate Immunity Act”

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No doubt you've heard that POTUS was in Illinois on Wednesday touting yet another phony solution to a phony crisis -- capping damage awards on "frivolous lawsuits" against doctors. He's framing it as a battle for "tort reform."

Don't fall for it.

If you do, if you argue whether or not we need "tort reform," you've already lost the battle. If you argue whether or not malpractice insurance is too high, you've already lost the battle.

Instead, re-frame the issue -- POTUS' initiative is one that will close the courts against injured patients while offering physicians, hospitals and insurance companies lifetime immunity against personal and professional accountability.

Consider this:

According to several research studies in the last decade, a total of 225,000 Americans per year have died as a result of their medical treatments:

• 12,000 deaths per year due to unnecessary surgery
  
• 7,000 deaths per year due to medication errors in hospitals
  
• 20,000 deaths per year due to other errors in hospitals
  
• 80,000 deaths per year due to infections in hospitals
  
• 106,000 deaths per year due to negative effects of drugs

Thus, America's healthcare-system-induced deaths are the third leading cause of the death in the U.S., after heart disease and cancer.

So what price does the medical industry pay for this kind of performance? They pay -- wait for it -- 2% of the cost of health care towards malpractice insurance.

Two cents on the dollar. POTUS calls that a crisis.

Let's be fair -- many, many health care professionals are finding that severe cost-cutting is forcing them to change the way they practice medicine, often cutting corners. That might account for some of the deaths cited above.

Another part of the problem is that over 40 million people in the U.S. do not have access to proper healthcare as we know it. They are forced to get help from understaffed and overworked hospital emergency rooms or simply postponing care until it is too late. That might account for another portion of the deaths cited above.

But what about the rest?

The fact is, large corporations have no disincentive against engaging in irresponsible and immoral behavior that harms the public. Behavior that accounts for all the rest of the 225,000 deaths cited above.

Well, that's not strictly true...there is one disincentive -- tort law:

It is only the threat of huge punitive damages that has any effect on companies that put profit ahead of public health and well-being. Without that threat — with a small cap on awards — irresponsible companies can fold the relatively low cost of potential lawsuits into the cost of doing business and go on selling dangerous products unchecked.

Public safety requires keeping the courts open for juries to make awards appropriate not just to the suffering of the victims, but to the threat to the public.

It is a matter of protection.

The proposal to cap awards would effectively take the power to punish away from juries, and would make it hard for those harmed to sue, since lawyers would have a financial disincentive to take such a case. This would have the practical effect of closing off the courts to those seeking redress from corporate harm.

Justice requires open courts.

As progressives, we need to promote our fundamental core values:

• We are empathetic; we care about people.
  
• We promote responsibility and accountability
  
• We help, we don't harm
  
• We protect the powerless

Lastly, be careful in your use of language --

talk about responsibility instead of victimhood. Talk about accountability instead of grievances. Talk about citizens instead of consumers. Talk about open courts instead of money.

Given the common-sense approach to this problem, why on earth would conservatives tout the phony solution of "tort reform" to the phony crisis of "higher malpractice premiums?"

what they really care most about is other effects that follow from this: to allow corporations to weaken public protection laws which guard the public's health and safety, to weaken environmental regulations that restrict their business operations, and to eliminate an important fund-raising base for Democratic candidates by limiting the income of public protection attorneys who overwhelmingly donate to Democratic candidates.

Although "frivolous lawsuits" is the catchphrase, it's about many other goals that go unstated in the public debate.

Keep your eyes on the ball, my friends. There's a lot at stake.

:::UPDATE::: Massachusetts has come up with a novel approach to protecting public safety in the medical field: sideline the bad doctors.

(HT to The Rockridge Institute)