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by | Mar 16, 2011
That title is not out of a fiction novel. It could happen right here in our time.
A few weeks ago, both the Obama Administration and the US House made major moves to begin limiting the outlandish awards being handed out by some juries in medical malpractice cases. This area has long been a trial lawyers’ playground and each of us is paying the price.
We may be making the right kind of progress now. The President included $250 million in his budget so that the Department of Justice could work with states to rewrite their medical malpractice laws and see real, effective change on this issue. The proposal provides some specific areas of relief by using judges with expertise in this area to decide cases instead of allowing juries to dole out unreasonable awards. Additional proposals might include creating reliable standards for doctors to operate under that would allow them to prove they were not negligent and a shift from full liability of every entity involved, to proportional liability amongst all parties (hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, etc.).
House Republican efforts are a little more straightforward. They would impose a cap on non-economic damages awarded from juries. This would take out much of the incentive for the frivolous and costly lawsuits in the medical industry. Here is a more detailed summary of House File 5, cleared through committee about a month ago (you can read the bill here):
- Help Efficient, Accessible, Low Cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act of 2011 – Sets conditions for lawsuits arising from health care liability claims regarding health care goods or services or any medical product affecting interstate commerce.
- Sets a statute of limitations of three years after the date of manifestation of injury or one year after the claimant discovers the injury, with certain exceptions.
- Limits noneconomic damages to $250,000. Makes each party liable only for the amount of damages directly proportional to such party’s percentage of responsibility.
- Allows the court to restrict the payment of attorney contingency fees. Limits the fees to a decreasing percentage based on the increasing value of the amount awarded.
- Allows the introduction of collateral source benefits and the amount paid to secure such benefits as evidence. Prohibits a provider of such benefits from recovering any amount from an award in a health care lawsuit involving injury or wrongful death.
- Authorizes the award of punitive damages only where: (1) it is proven by clear and convincing evidence that a person acted with malicious intent to injure the claimant or deliberately failed to avoid unnecessary injury the claimant was substantially certain to suffer; and (2) compensatory damages are awarded. Limits punitive damages to the greater of two times the amount of economic damages or $250,000.
- Denies punitive damages in the case of products approved, cleared, or licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or otherwise considered in compliance with FDA standards.
- Provides for periodic payments of future damages.
The movement on both sides should be seen as a win for health care consumers. Runaway litigation has led to massive increases in unnecessary medical procedures and huge run ups in doctors’ insurance premiums, and will continue to spin out of control. All of those expenses are passed on to the premium payer and the taxpayer, in other words, you and me. Now is the time to enact real medical liability reform.
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by | Mar 14, 2011
The world of modern American politics has often been described as “Hollywood for the ugly.†While this may or may not be true, politicians are indeed asking us to do what film directors do when we attend the movies—suspend disbelief. Removing reality and practicality certainly facilitates a good story and makes for fantastic special effects, but when these principles are used in running a government the results are, predictably, disastrous.
Though you wouldn’t think you would have to inform our elected officials of such things, the sad truth is that every non-creative discipline is subject to cumbersome, but necessary confines. In other words—reality.
This is true not only in the fields of engineering, architecture, aviation, music, and chemistry, but also in governing. The skill in any of these endeavors lies in achieving a desired result within the confines of a given discipline, and skill is precisely what is lacking in the vast majority of our Legislators. If you are an engineer or an architect you are constrained in your designs by pesky things such as physics, load bearing, and torque. In aviation you are constrained by Newton’s laws of motion and gravity. Musicians are largely required to write and play inside a given key. These are the reasons that you don’t simply draw your dream house on a sheet of paper and give it to a builder to begin construction; or why anyone can’t just pick up an instrument, randomly play a bunch of notes, and have it sound good.
In governing the main confines that an American politician must adhere to are the Constitution and the budget. The mess that our Country finds itself in currently can largely be attributed to a lack of discipline in complying with these two constraints. That is not to say that the last three decades of our elected officials have not been skilled at anything, just that they have shown prowess in the areas that benefit themselves and not our Nation. They have by and large focused on, and have mastered, the art of getting elected and re-elected. They have succeeded in the craft of politics, a far different and easier thing than governing.
What we are in dire need of at this moment is a renaissance in the art of governing. This entails providing the most results with the resources you have on hand. Fiscally speaking the concept is as simple as taking projected revenues for a fiscal year and working backwards from that number to zero. This is not to say that the process is not complex, but that the complexities and hard work lay in the prioritizing. Fighting these battles needs to be the “serve us†part of the public service that our legislators are supposedly providing us. The fact is that when they appropriate without the boundaries of a budget they are shirking off all the hard work and bitter infighting. In turn they are doing us all a public “disservice.â€
A look back at the make-ups of the last three Congresses provides some insight into why, particularly fiscally, they have failed so miserably. The 109th Congress was sworn in 2005, the 110th in 2007, and the 111th in 2009. The members whose previous occupation was listed as “Accountant†numbered five in the 109th and bumped up to six for both the 110th and 111th sessions. This means that of the bodies 535 members an equal number (six) listed their prior job as “Peace Corp. volunteer†as those who did “Accountant.†Perhaps a more relevant and disturbing development is that the 109th Congress, for the first time in history, had a greater number of members list “public service/politics†as their prior profession than list business (195 to 193). This trend continued in both the 110th and 111th Congresses, with the 111th being the first in history to have “public service/politics†as their most listed prior occupation, beating out both business and law.
Having such a large number of leaders with their formative experience being politics is clearly unhealthy and you need not be a sage to predict the outcome. Reaffirming that any child can color outside the lines, it is hardly surprising that since the 109th Congress was sworn in in 2005 the National Debt has grown from $7.95 trillion to the $14.1 figure it stands at today. What this shows is that while the average years served by our Legislators is on the rise, along with an ever increasing amount of political experience had even prior to taking office, their fiscal performance worsens.
Though discouraging, as long as our body politic is composed of and replenished with those schooled and skilled primarily in politics we will continue to see destructive results. There is a skill to good governance. Like any other discipline the skill resides in achieving results within confines, in this case the Constitution and the budget. When we are able to elect leaders with this skill we will have elected prioritizers instead of mere appropriators. Until then we will remain victims of the lost art of Governing.
by DJ Durant | Feb 23, 2011
Who would have thought that the state with the first Socialist governor and subsequent Socialist Party candidate for President, Robert LaFollette, would be the first state to actively attempt to bring the public employee unions under control? What’s next? Vermont goes Conservative?
So much of life can be equated to the supply and demand theory of economics. That is, there’s unlimited demand for things, but always a limited supply and when demand outstrips supply, there’s friction. This concept can be applied to the present fiscal situation that Wisconsin, and all states for that matter, face. They are out of money. Tax revenues, that is, supply, have outstripped the demand for services. The public unions, in fact all unions, have been feeding at the trough of the nation’s largesse for years. Governors have conceded “rights” (also known as privileges in the real world) to them in an attempt to keep these spoiled brats, for lack of a better term, happy.
But state goverments are struggling to provide basic services, and in order to remain fiscally solvent, something has to give. Credit Governor Walker with having the cajones (a Texas term for chutzpah), to admit to his state and the rest of the country that this has to stop.
The consequences of what’s playing out in Madison are significant. Does a special interest group get to dictate how much of the fiscal pie they get to keep? Or does the duly-elected governor decided how to run his state? And if the unions fall in Wisconsin, what about all the other states that are stuggling to balance their budget and keep taxes down? And at what point do the taxpayers, the customers, the folks actually paying the bills, get to decide how much they’re willing to pay for under-performance? I don’t get to demand a raise if I don’t perform in my job. How are the unions any different?
I know the union contracts were negotiated in good faith, but the times are different. A job with fewer benefits is better than no job at all. The supply of money is limited, and they don’t get to demand more than what there is available. And the people who actually do the paying should get to call the shots.
I wish you the best, Governor Walker. To quote Simon and Garfunkel, “…our nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you…”.
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by Stephen DeMaura | Feb 17, 2011
The following is a guest piece by Stephen DeMaura, President of Americans for Job Security, a national conservative issue advocacy organization. For more than 10 years AJS has advocated for pro-growth, pro-jobs public policy to strengthen the American economy. -ed.
Make Room in the Market, Monsanto Monopoly
There’s a battle in agriculture that deserves a greater focus: The Seed Trait Wars.
What our families, our nation and the world will eat in the future depends in large part on the future of a robust, competitive biotech seed sector. Farmers and independent seed companies will need seeds with the genetic traits to deliver higher yields from the same land no matter the conditions. To do that we’ll need more competition.
It’s competition that drives innovation, better prices, and more choices, and competition that gives farmers the right seeds to grow what they need, where they need to grow it.
WORLDWIDE NEED IS MOUNTING
The world will need 70 percent more food in 2050 than it does today, according to the UN.   Farmers will need the best seeds to grow the crops that will feed the increasing number of people that will populate this planet. And they’ll need seeds that are genetically engineered with traits to account for their unique, geographic region and needs. COMPETITION CRITICAL
We’re at a critical juncture for want of competition. For example, Monsanto controls nearly 100 percent of the soybean seed trait market and about 80 percent of the corn seed trait market, as shown here. The company is using anticompetitive tactics to assert its grip as a single supplier, cement its monopoly, and block choice for farmers.
PATENT PLAYS
The primary tactic in Monsanto’s playbook is something we’re used to seeing in the pharmaceutical industry. It’s called patent extending. Prolonging the life of a patent by introducing a “new†product that is essentially the same as the one with the expiring patent. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready® patent in corn and soybeans ends in 2014. Its new Roundup Ready 2 Yield® technology is essentially the same as the first generation product. Read what the American Antitrust Institute thinks of the state of play in the biotech seed sector here.
The problem is that Monsanto wants to have its cake and eat it, too. Have the new patent and restrict the availability of the old one as its patent nears expiration. With generic competition, new seeds could be brought to market in 2015 and innovation would be gated only by the bounds of creativity, not bottlenecked by monopoly.
MORE MONSANTO MARKET MAYHEM
- Preventing farmers from creating and choosing the seeds that would work best for them
- Charging monopoly prices (e.g, in 2009, announcing a 42 percent price increase for a product [RR2Y® in soybeans] that demonstrably provided no significant quality improvement)
FEEDING THE FUTURE
If America’s farmers and the world’s farmers are going to produce the amount and variety of affordable food we’ll all need, farmers will need choice and innovation that comes with full and fair competition.
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by | Feb 11, 2011
A study of the National debt over the last thirty years proves that our Representatives are not responsible enough to continuing governing without the rules of the game being changed. Though much belabored, it bears repeating that the National Debt did not break the one trillion dollar threshold until the year 1982 and not until the fiscal year 2002 did it break six trillion. From 2002 to 2010 it more than doubled from $6.25 trillion to over $13 trillion dollars.
Changing the rules of the game in this case means the passing of some form of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This is far from a new idea and most people, especially newcomers to the world of politics, would be shocked at how close we have come, even recently, to achieving it. In the 90s alone constitutional amendments involving balancing the budget came to serious Congressional votes at least once in six different years—1990, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997. In ‘92, ‘94, and ‘97 the Balanced Budget Amendment came up only a handful of votes short of achieving the two-thirds majority needed in both Houses.
Without getting too much into the weeds it is significant to note that the amendment in 1992 was sponsored by a Democrat—Charles Stenholm of Texas. In the House it garnered 116 of its 280 yes votes from Democrats with only 3 of its 153 no votes coming from Republicans (2) and Independents (1). One of the two attempts at passage in 1997 (S.J Res.12), though excluding Social Security, was not only sponsored by North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan but was shockingly co-sponsored by both Diane Feinstein and Harry Reid. In light of their recent attitudes and votes on spending one can only guess at the numbers of skins each has had to shed to evolve their position from then to now.
As frustrating to the bill’s advocates as these votes were they were dwarfed by the events of 1995. The fate of the 1995 Balanced Budget Amendment, knowing what has transpired since, has to stand as the mother of all “the one that got away†stories. With the addition of just one more Senator’s vote the amendment would have passed, gone to the States for ratification, and the Federal Budget would have, by Constitutional mandate, been forced to be balanced as soon as 1997 and no later than 2002. From 1997 to 2010 our Federal Debt grew from $5.4 to $13.6 trillion dollars. This is an addition of $8.2 trillion that could have been avoided by changing this increase from being merely unconscionable to being unconstitutional. Adding to the agony is that, under intense pressure from President Clinton, six Senators that had voted for a nearly identical amendment in ‘94 switched to a no vote in ‘95. Among the six were Byron Dorgan, Diane Feinstein, and Harry Reid, who all, as noted before, would go on to sponsor and co-sponsor a similarly spirited Constitutional Amendment in 1997.
While the details of this history are ugly there also lies within it a glimmer of hope and perhaps a blueprint for future success. As sad as it is that constitutionally confining our Legislators is needed, it is equally as promising that achieving such a feat was that closely at hand. Resetting the same debate in 2011 includes facing the identical sticking points and opponents that killed the effort in the 90s, namely the inclusion of Social Security and the unions.
Though counter-productive I would favor excluding Social Security if this compromise was the difference between non-passage and passage. This makes strategic sense both because Social Security reform is better achieved as a separate issue and even with it excluded the amendment would make a massive difference. In terms of the union position of opposing due to potential cuts in wages and safety net services, I would not give an inch of concession. Here the truth is that, barring a sustained economic boom, these things will have to be reduced. The fact that the National debt has more than doubled since the last time this issue was hotly debated not only adds to the causes urgency but makes a public showdown with the unions increasingly winnable.
Also different this time around is a new proposal offered up by Representatives Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Mike Pence of Indiana. Like the Balanced Budget Amendments of the 90s, and most common sense solutions, it is very simple and consists of only a few paragraphs. The Spending Limit Amendment states that the total annual outlays of the Federal government shall not exceed 20% of the United States yearly economic output. The two exceptions to this being that Congress could provide for a specific increase with a two-thirds vote in each House and could waive the provision while a declaration of war was in effect.
Every serious thinking Conservative should begin their own investigation and analysis of this and other likeminded proposals. Legally binding pieces of legislation dealing with how Congress spends money will not only be at the forefront of political debate in the coming years, but is the one area that provides the Tea Party movement an opportunity to leave a lasting legacy. Though failing in this effort in the 90s can be called “the one that got away,†coming up short this time around likely will rename the story “the one that broke the camel’s back.â€
That title is not out of a fiction novel. It could happen right here in our time.
