Obama won't take on the trial lawyers tonight
Examiner Editorial
September 9, 2009
Don't hold your breath this evening waiting for President Obama to utter the words "trial lawyers." As former DNC chairman Howard Dean told an August town hall crowd, Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have carefully avoided including anything in Obamacare that the trial lawyers oppose. As this newspaper has repeatedly noted, the trial lawyers lobby is among Washington's most powerful special interest groups. The trial lawyers used their generous campaign contributions to buy enough senators and representatives to kill measures they oppose, and to approve legislation they favor. Not coincidentally, the latter often creates new reasons for them to sue somebody. That way, the trial lawyers make more money and the politicians get more campaign cash. What the trial lawyers won't tolerate, though,is health care reform that includes medical malpractice caps.
A major factor in rising health care costs is the ever-present threat to doctors and other health care professionals of being sued by trial lawyers looking for big contingency settlements and the fat fees that come with them. As a result, medical malpractice insurance premiums have zoomed into the stratosphere, thus encouraging "defensive medicine." Defensive medicine is when doctors order multiple tests, MRIs, and other procedures, not because the patient needs them, but to protect against litigation based on allegations that something should have been done that wasn't. Experts estimate that as much as $300 billion in unnecessary health care costs are attributable to defensive medicine. Besides more time-consuming appointments, patients are left with fewer services and less access to quality care as doctors either narrow their practices or leave the medical profession entirely.
Incredibly enough, however, the class-action trial lawyers may be just getting tuned up, considering the explosion in recent years of their television advertising seeking new medical malpractice cases. A study conducted for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and released yesterday shows that trial lawyer advertising between 2004 and 2008 soared 1,300 percent in dollars spent, from $3.8 million to more than $62 million. This flood of trial lawyer cash for advertising paid for 10,150 spots in 2004 and steadily increased annually to more than 156,000 last year. We hear a lot of trash talk from the White House and Democrats in Congress about health insurance industry abuses and profits. But that gleaming bronze lady named Freedom adorning the Capitol Dome will croon The Star Spangled Banner before Obama utters a critical word about his buddies and contributors among the trial lawyers.
