You and your brother are incredibly mean-spirited. IMO. See "Why Democrats Are So Angry" article below There is simply no excuse for not being civil, and most of your posts, and CG's....are anything but civil.
Why Democrats Are So Angry
Neal Boortz
Friday, Aug. 3, 2001
Now there’s been a compromise on the Patients’ Bill of Rights. Bush has a bill he can sign, and that bill has been passed by the Republican House and sent to a House-Senate conference committee.
Democrats are royally ticked! They are beside themselves! And just why are the leftists so upset? Were any of the real patient protections in the bill removed or modified? No, they weren’t
The Democrats are upset because the Patients’ Bill of Rights may not now accomplish what the Democrats wanted it to accomplish. The bill was never about new private health care rights for patients. It was all about moving the United States closer to nationalized – government-controlled – health care.
To Democrats the primary provision of the Patients’ Bill of Rights was the part that allowed patients to sue HMOs and employers for millions of dollars. The Democrats wanted a cap of $5 million, and they wanted those suits to be tried in state courts where trial lawyers have a better chance of finding high-award juries. <b<Furthermore, the Democrats wanted the patients to be able to bring these suits without any review of their claim at all. The plan was to create so much fear among employers – and to boost the cost of HMO health plans to such an extent – that thousands of employers would just throw up their hands and cancel all health coverage for their employees.
Think about it. You’re an employer providing health coverage to your employees. Suddenly you have a contingent $5 million liability for each employee if something goes wrong with their health care. What are you going to do? I’ll tell you what you will do, if you are a good businessman. You are going to cancel your health coverage for your employees and just increase their pay by an amount equal to what you were paying for health care.
Now, you would think that the employee would then be able to just take that money and buy their own policy, wouldn’t you? Well, hold on! The Democrats took care of that eventuality too. They recently defeated a Republican proposal to allow employees to deduct the cost of health insurance on their income tax. Employers can deduct the cost, individuals cannot. When you’re trying to create chaos in health care, you don’t want to do anything that could possibly make it easier for individuals to carry their own health insurance policies. Independent individuals are dangerous to statist dreams.
Well – the new bill hits the Democrats on all of these fronts. It reduces the pain and suffering awards to a $1.5 million cap, provides for a review system before these suits can be filed, and adds additional protection for private employers.
Trial lawyers, as you know, are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. A full 90 percent of campaign contributions from personal injury and medical malpractice trial lawyers go to Democrats. This money comes from the huge amounts of money these trial lawyers make from their contingency fee arrangements. The lower the awards, the lower the fees. The lower the fees, the less money you have to donate to Democrats. Yet another reason Democrats are so outraged!
Some simple math here. Let’s lowball it and say that a typical medical malpractice lawsuit would cost $500,000 to prosecute. The lawyer is going to have a contract with the client stating that the costs of the lawsuit will come out of the proceeds – then the lawyers will take 40 percent or more of what’s left. If your limit in pain and suffering damages is $5 million, that would leave about $1.8 million for the lawyer after all is said and done. Reduce the cap to $1.5 million and the lawyer’s take suddenly shrinks to $400,000. Quite frankly, that’s not enough for the high-powered Democratic Party donors to go after.
Fewer lawsuits, less chaos. Less chaos, fewer constituents demanding solutions from their elected officials. The Democrats were looking for the resulting chaos to produce demands for more government involvement in health care. Their goal is complete and total nationalization – and their goal has been pushed back by George W. Bush.
No wonder they’re pissed!
newsmax.com |
