By David Frum, CNN Contributor – link to original article

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The House bill passed Saturday night protects the fees of trial lawyers, Frum says
• He says states that have capped fees have seen increase in doctors
• When Texas capped fees, lawsuits fell and doctors moved to the state, he says
• Frum: Trial lawyers are benefiting because they provide campaign funds for Democrats

RELATED TOPICS

• Medical Errors and Malpractice
• Association of Trial Lawyers of America
• Health Care Policy
• Personal Injury Law

(CNN) — You’ve heard the saying: “In war, amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.”

The political equivalent: “Amateurs talk ideology — professionals talk interest groups.”

Small but sophisticated interest groups use big political battles to gain special advantages. Health care reform is, of course, the biggest battle of them all, with trillions of dollars at stake.

On Saturday night with the House vote in favor of the health reform bill, the trial lawyers sliced themselves a nice little piece of that bonanza.

It’s Section 2531 of the bill — to be precise Section 2531(4)b — and it provides as follows:

The new health bill will empower the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make grants to states that reform their medical malpractice systems. There are just two conditions: Those reforms must not “limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.”

Which is like saying that we’re going to encourage you to develop a personal weight loss plan that includes neither exercise nor changes in diet.

Here’s how Section 2531 works. Over the past decade and a half, states have reacted to abusive lawsuits by imposing various restrictions on personal injury awards.

In California, pain and suffering damages cannot exceed $250,000. Attorneys may collect no more than 15 percent of malpractice awards over $600,000.

The impact of these kinds of reforms can be dramatic. After Texas capped pain and suffering damages at $750,000 in 2003, the number of malpractice lawsuits dropped abruptly. Lawsuits in Harris County (Houston and environs) plunged by 50 percent.

Fewer lawsuits meant lower malpractice premiums. Texas’ largest malpractice insurance carrier cut costs to doctors by 17 percent. Lower insurance premiums attracted more medical professionals to the state. In the 1990s, Texas ranked low in the nation in the number of doctors per person. In the four years after 2003, the number of doctors in the state jumped by 18 percent.

“It was hard to believe at first, we thought it was a spike,” the executive director of the states’ medical board told the New York Times.

Texas’ experience is dramatic, but consistent, with other reforming states. States with damage caps gain more doctors than uncapped states — and the difference is greatest in the most underserved counties within capped states. Capped states have 5.5 percent more OB-GYNs per person in their rural counties than do states without caps.

But the money saved by insurers, doctors and their customers is money subtracted from the pockets of trial lawyers — and those lawyers carry real clout in the Democratic Congress.

The trial lawyers’ national PAC, the American Association for Justice, was the second-biggest source of PAC dollars for Democratic candidates in the 2006 election year: almost $2.6 million. That same year, Iowa’s trial lawyers elected a former president of their association to Congress. Had the National Enquirer been less inquiring, a former trial lawyer named John Edwards might well be serving as attorney general right now.

Huey Long once summed up the professional politicians’ credo:

“Those who support me early will have my close attention when I win office. Those who support me late will have my attention when I win office. And those who oppose me –” and here he’d wink — “they’ll get good government.”

We all know what Long meant by “close attention,” and his old party apparently still lives by his rules. On Saturday, House Democrats have delivered some very “close attention” to their friends in the trial bar. The question is: who will stand up for good government for the rest of us?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum.

Editor’s note: David Frum, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was a special assistant to President George W. Bush in 2001-2002. He is the author of six books, including “Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again,” and the editor of FrumForum.com

My modest proposal to rearrange how lawyers do business.

By RICHARD B. RAFAL

Wall Street Journal – link to original

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009,

Since we are moving toward socialism with ObamaCare, the time has come to do the same with other professions—especially lawyers. Physician committees can decide whether lawyers are necessary in any given situation.

At a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., last month, our uninformed lawyer in chief suggested that we physicians would rather chop off a foot than manage diabetes since we would make more money doing surgery. Then President Obama compounded his attack by claiming a doctor’s reimbursement is between “$30,000″ and “$50,000″ for such amputations! (Actually, such surgery costs only about $1,500.)

Physicians have never been so insulted. Because of these affronts, I will gladly volunteer for the important duty of controlling and regulating lawyers. Since most of what lawyers do is repetitive boilerplate or pushing paper, physicians would have no problem dictating what is appropriate for attorneys. We physicians know much more about legal practice than lawyers do about medicine.

Following are highlights of a proposed bill authorizing the dismantling of the current framework of law practice and instituting socialized legal care:

• Contingency fees will be discouraged, and eventually outlawed, over a five-year period. This will put legal rewards back into the pockets of the deserving—the public and the aggrieved parties. Slick lawyers taking their “cut” smacks of a bookie operation. Attorneys will be permitted to keep up to 3% in contingency cases, the remainder going into a pool for poor people.

• Legal “DRGs.” Each potential legal situation will be assigned a relative value, and charges limited to this amount. Program participation and acceptance of this amount is mandatory, regardless of the number of hours spent on the matter. Government schedules of flat fees for each service, analogous to medicine’s Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs), will be issued. For example, any divorce will have a set fee of, say, $1,000, regardless of its simplicity or complexity. This will eliminate shady hourly billing. Niggling fees such as $2 per page photocopied or faxed would disappear. Who else nickels-and-dimes you while at the same time charging hundreds of dollars per hour? I’m surprised lawyers don’t tack shipping and handling onto their bills.

• Legal “death panels.” Over 75? You will not be entitled to legal care for any matter. Why waste money on those who are only going to die soon? We can decrease utilization, save money and unclog the courts simultaneously. Grandma, you’re on your own.

• Ration legal care. One may need to wait months to consult an attorney. Despite a perceived legal need, physician review panels or government bureaucrats may deem advice unnecessary. Possibly one may not get representation before court dates or deadlines. But that’ s tough: What do you want for “free”?

• Physician controlled legal review. This is potentially the most exciting reform, with doctors leading committees for determining the necessity of all legal procedures and the fairness of attorney fees. What a wonderful way for doctors to get even with the sharks attempting to eviscerate the practice of medicine.

• Discourage/eliminate specialization. Legal specialists with extra training and experience charge more money, contributing to increased costs of legal care, making it unaffordable for many. This reform will guarantee a selection of mediocre, unmotivated attorneys but should help slow rising legal costs. Big shot under indictment? Classified National Archives documents down your pants? Sitting president defending against impeachment? Have FBI agents found $90,000 in your freezer? Too bad. Under reform you too may have to go to the government legal shop for advice.

• Electronic legal records. We should enter the digital age and computerize and centralize legal records nationwide. All files must be in a standard, preferably inconvenient, format and must be available to government agencies. A single database of judgments, court records, client files, etc. will decrease legal expenses. Anyone with Internet access will be able to search the database, eliminating unjustifiable fees charged by law firms for supposedly proprietary information, while fostering transparency. It will enable consumers to dump their clunker attorneys and transfer records easily.

• Ban legal advertisements. Catchy phone numbers such as 1-800-LAWYERS would be seized by the government and repurposed for reporting unscrupulous attorneys.

• New government oversight. Government overhead to manage the legal system will include a cabinet secretary, commissioners, ombudsmen, auditors, assistants, czars and departments.

• Collect data about the supply of and demand for attorneys.Create a commission to study the diversity and geographic distribution of attorneys, with power to stipulate and enforce corrective actions to right imbalances. The more bureaucracy the better. One can never have too many eyes watching these sleazy sneaks.

• Lawyer Reduction Act (H.R. -3200). A self-explanatory bill that not only decreases the number of law students, but also arbitrarily removes 3,200 attorneys from practice each year. Textbook addition by subtraction.

Enthusiastically embracing the above legal changes can serve as a “teachable moment” and will go a long way toward giving the lawyers who run Congress a taste of their own medicine.

Dr. Rafal is a radiologist in New York City.

Video – Howard Dean: Democrats Left Tort Reform Out of Health Care Bill Because They Feared ‘Taking On’ Trial Lawyers

Howard Dean: Democrats Left Tort Reform Out of Health Care Bill Because They Feared ‘Taking On’ Trial Lawyers – link to original article

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter & Edwin Mora

Video – link

(CNSNews.com) - Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, a medical doctor who served as governor of Vermont, said at a town hall meeting on Tuesday night that Democrats in Congress did not include tort reform in the health care bill because they were fearful of “taking on” the trial lawyers.

“This is the answer from a doctor and a politician,” said Dean. “Here is why tort reform is not in the bill. When you go to pass a really enormous bill like that the more stuff you put in, the more enemies you make, right? And the reason why tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who 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. Now, that’s the truth.”

Dean was speaking at a town hall meeting sponsored by Rep. Jim Moran (D.-Va.) at South Lakes High School in Reston, Va.  He was responding to a question by Roland Tulino, a local resident who attended the meeting. 
 
Attendees who wanted to ask questions were required to write their name, hometown and question on a file card and put it in one of three cardboard boxes indicating whether they were for, against or undecided about the health care bill under development in Congress.
 
After he pulled Tulino’s card from the box and asked him to come forward, Moran accused the man who presented himself of impersonating Tulino–when in fact the man was Tulino.
 
When Tulino showed Moran his idenfication, Moran let him go ahead with this question.
 
“There’s $200 million over 10 years in savings if we had tort reform and nobody loses but the lawyers,” said Tulino. “Why have we not even considered that tonight in the discussion sir? Tell the American people that.”
 
Moran turned the podium over to Dean to answer the question.
 
Later Moran lauded Dean for his “honest answer” and apologized to Tulino for suspecting he was not who he said he was.
 
“That’s a very honest answer,” said Moran of Dean’s response.  “Before we go any further where is Mr. Tulino. Okay, Mr. Tulino because I noticed you gesturing and yelling, I suspected you where not who you are, the fact is that you were so I want to apologize for doubting that you were, number one. That’s number one, number two, it’s a very a good question, it’s a very appropriate question and it got an honest answer.“