Appearing to embrace the new civility and bipartisanship
that’s the currently appropriate stance for politicians following
the Tucson shooting, President Obama in his State of the Union
address tossed a bone to the newly empowered Congressional
Republicans by giving a half-hearted nod to medical malpractice
reform.
“I’m willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs,
including one that Republicans suggested last year — medical
malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits,” said Obama,
referring to the newly enacted health care law and his willingness
to work with Republicans to “fix what needs fixing.”
Linking the words “frivolous” and “lawsuits” is not
something that trial lawyers, major political donors to Obama, like
to hear.
President Obama’s comment on medical malpractice reform
came one day after House Republicans introduced a bill — H.R. 5 —
that would limit punitive damages in malpractice
lawsuits.
The American Association for Justice (formerly called the
Association of Trial Lawyers, but “Justice” has a better ring to
it, sounding less seedy and money-grubbing) calls the new House
medical liability bill “extreme.”
“Opponents of the civil justice system have introduced
H.R. 5, a bill that severely restricts the rights of medical
negligence victims,” says a statement from the American Association
of Justice. “Breathtaking in scope, H.R. 5 applies to medical
malpractice, pharmaceutical products, nursing homes and health
insurance claims, while it ignores the fact that 98,000 patients
die every year from medical errors.”
Oddly, the American Association for Justice, with every
incentive to exaggerate the number of preventable deaths from
medical errors, appears to be using numbers that may be only half
as large as the actual problem.
An article in Scientific American in August 2009,
“Deaths from avoidable medical error more than double in past
decade, investigation show,” reports the following: “Preventable
medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000
deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the
Hearst media corporation. The report comes 10 years after the
Institute of Medicine’s ‘To Err Is Human’ analysis, which found
that 44,000 to 98,000 people were dying annually due to these
errors and called for the medical community and government to cut
that number in half by 2004.”
On the other side, pro-reform advocates point to studies
showing that just the cost of defensive medicine is draining up to
$150 billion per year out of the health care system, a wasteful and
unwarranted expense that also produces death within the
system.
In other legal news in Congress, Democratic congressman
Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is now suing a cafeteria in the Longworth
House Office Building for $150,000 for supposedly inflicting
“serious and permanent” damages that he allegedly suffered after
biting an olive pit that was supposedly in a sandwich
wrap.
The suit claims that Kucinich encountered the allegedly
dangerous wrap, containing supposedly “dangerous substances,” some
years ago — “on or about April 17, 2008.”
The question from the kitchen: “Anyone remember who was
wrapping those wraps back then, three years ago? Wasn’t it that guy
Diego, the one from Tijuana who was eating olives every minute so
he wouldn’t smoke?”
In other legal news from a Congressional cafeteria,
remember when Bernice Harris, a longtime cashier in the U.S.
Senate cafeteria was accused of “harassment” after calling
one of her regular customers “honey” and “sugar”?
Being called “baby,” complained Christopher Held, an
employee of Sen. Mitch McConnell, was “real
bothersome.”
To toughen themselves up for their next round of allegedly
harsh and unwelcome interactions with the help in the cafeteria
line, Senate staffers might want to try a stint with a gun in
Afghanistan, something a little tougher than being subjected to
hearing a sweet lady, raised in an age before we sued Betty Crocker
for making us fat, say, “Sugar, don’t forget, we’re serving meat
loaf tomorrow, with real mashed potatoes.”
