Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius held a White House press conference today to announce a series of demonstration projects as part of Obama’s heath care reform. These projects would include “$25 million in grants to states for a pilot program that would seek to lessen the impact of malpractice suits on the U.S. medical system.” It is, as Mary Katherine Ham has noted here before, a bit ironic that Sebelius would be tasked with such a project given her previous work as a lobbyist for the trial lawyers — the very people who profit the most from malpractice suits. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained this copy of a 1994 AP story on a mink coat that Sebelius received from the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association. If fur is murder, it seems malpractice is just plain profitable.
