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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (13426)	2/12/2010 4:32:07 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

It's "reform" when you like the regulation and "regulation" when you don't like it. The first part is right. Reform is almost always used to indicate something positive, or perceived to be positive, or at least perceived to be possibly positive. In fact its part of the definition, which is why I often talk about "reform" with the quotes when dealing with the proposals on the table to change health care insurance in the US. As for the 2nd part, not that isn't true of my useage. Its hardly the case that everything I don't like I call "regulation", or even that everything I do like can't possibly be called regulation. Its just that tort reform isn't adding to government control over an area. That area already is controlled by the government, and to a large extent done by the government (since tort laws are government legislation, courts are government institutions, and trials are government processes). If tort reform also reduced allowable settlements and not just awards from a trial, then it would be regulating what people could agree to, so regulation would fit perfectly. In fact I'd even call it "intrusive regulation". Just limiting the government's own processes? Well I guess regulation of the government is regulation, but its of the type I find less likely to be objectionable, esp. when it limits the governments reach/interference, like tort reform can. Of course it largely depends on the actual change passed in to law. All sorts of bad things things can be fit in to a category that is generally acceptable, even good.