January 2nd, 2008

Presidential Politics and the Iowa Caucus

I don’t understand why the whole country kowtows to Iowa. I mean really, they have just 1% of the nation’s population with 2.9 million people, of which 150,000 – 200,000 will likely turn out. Every four years we get this same nonsense with huge expenditures of time and money for a state with very few actual electoral votes.

Sorry for going off topic here, but this is a stupid system. Logic dictates a system of primaries that are grouped by region; New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southwest, you get the idea. Just divvy the country up into 10 or so regions and have regional primaries a few weeks apart. The candidates and staffs can then travel much more easily from place to place, see the most numbers of people, and financial resources can be pooled with the regional ad purchases. The order of the contests is chosen by simply picking the regions out of a hat. This isn’t rocket science.

America doesn’t benefit from all the sound and fury coming out of one small farm state. I’ve got nothing against corn and wheat, but the idiotic system skews the political promises to the detriment of all. Except, of course, Iowans, who benefit from the political tourism and the promises. But let’s face it, all urban areas, who have much different concerns and vastly larger populations, get the shaft.

There is no rationale reason for the politicians to continue this. The importance of Iowa (and New Hampshire after that) is merely a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s important because it is first, not because it is actually important. That is a dumb way to run a nominating process.

OK, so having now opened the political can of worms, which I avoid unless it deals directly with the issues of this blog, let me prognosticate on what we will see on election day 2008.

Reps: McCain/Romney
Dems: Obama/Biden
Indep: Bloomberg/ Gary Hart (who correctly predicted an attack like September 11 and tried to warn)

As much as this New Yorker would like to see Clinton v. Giuliani v. Bloomberg, neither Hillary nor Rudy will get their party nominations.

 

January 1st, 2008

You Call That A Tort "Reform" Survey???

Most people with a modicum of intelligence know that a survey’s results are only as good as the questions that are asked. Rigging survey results is easy. The question here: Did Republican New York State Senator Stephen Saland give his constituents a deliberately rigged survey, or inadvertently screw up?

Here is the question that came out of a previously unpublished survey that I received via email from a constituent:

Would you support limiting medical malpractice law suits in order to decrease health care costs?

The problem with the survey question should be self-evident, but if it isn’t to you, I’ll spell it out: Medical malpractice suits are a tiny part of health care costs, so closing the court house door to people, like they do in California, will have no effect. Thus, the question asks you to assume as true its faulty premise.

Should you take my word for it without data? Nope. So let’s open up a copy of the recent report by Public Citizen that they put out in response to New York’s self-inflicted medical malpractice insurance “crisis.” In it, Public Citizen notes (with citation to authorities at pp. 6-7) that:

The sum of medical malpractice payments made by New York’s doctors in 2004 was
$765.8 million, accounting for only 0.61 percent of the $126.1 billion New Yorkers spent on health care that year (the most recent year for which such costs are available). Medical malpractice payments were no more than 0.77 percent of New York’s overall health care costs in any year since 1991.

With such a small sliver of health care costs being devoted to malpractice payments, it is foolish to assume that limiting malpractice suits will lower health care costs. It won’t happen. Worse still, a grant of some type of immunity or protection to a person that negligently injures another would shift the burden from that person to the injured and ultimateley to the taxpayer. That happens when the injured person starts consuming tax dollars from Medicaid and ending their tax payments from work due to their disability. Why a person that believes in limiting government, as Senator Saland presumably believes based on his Republican credentials, would want to provide governmental immunity/protection to a tortfeasor, escapes me.

So the question is, did Senator Saland submit a rigged question to his constituents on purpose, or was it inadvertent?

One way to know is to look at the other questions he asked. Here are a few that I cherry picked from the 12 that were asked:

  • Would an additional tax incentive for energy efficient cars and home heating sources encourage you to switch to using alternative energy?
  • Do you support legislation to make same sex marriages legal in New York?
  • Do you support the legalization of medical marijuana if it is prescribed by a doctor for seriously ill patients?

These look like fine inquiries. Since most of the questions on the form look like legitimate inquiries to constituents, even if some are imperfectly phrased, I think the questionnaire was likely done in good faith.

But how did such an obviously awful question about tort “reform” get included? I have to assume it is simply a lack of knowledge on the Senator’s part, that is no doubt encouraged by the medical industry and the insurance companies. I can see no other explanation.

I finish here by saying I’ve never met the Senator, and have no idea what his record is on closing the courthouse door to those that are injured, but I’m a glass-is-half-full kind of guy, so I give him (and everyone else) the benefit of the doubt unless I’ve been given a darn good reason to assume otherwise. I therefore assume the question was written out of ignorance, not as a political ploy of sending out a rigged question.

But it also means that if this Senator is under the mistaken impression that limiting medical malpractice suits will decrease health care costs, then so too are others.

(Eric Turkewitz is a personal injury attorney in New York)

 

January 1st, 2008

Another Tort "Reformer" Sees The Light

Dr. Dave Stewart is a California anesthesiologist. He supported tort “reform.” Then his 72 year old mother died after knee surgery from an undiagnosed bowel obstruction. When the family tried to hire a lawyer, they were turned down by two dozen different medical malpractice attorneys. (LA Times: Lacking Lawyers, Justice is Denied)

Why were they turned down? Because California has a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages (pain and suffering). And since his mom wasn’t working, it meant that any recovery was very limited. When you figure in the tens of thousands of dollars that might be needed for the case, and the vast amount of time, and the high risk of taking such cases, the lawyers weren’t interested.

Now guess what? Dr. Stewart isn’t such a fan of tort “reform” anymore. Surprised? Me either. It happens like all the time. Remember tort “reformer” Robert Bork? He sued big time for his injuries. Ever hear of Frank Cornelius? He wrote in the New York Times in 1994 how he was “crushed by his own reform.” In fact, the blog TortDeform has a gallery of what they term the “hypocrites of tort reform.”

Perhaps these people fall in the category of, “What’s good for thee is not good for me.” Or, perhaps, they have simply never given full thought to the true ramifications of their actions.

(hat tip: Day on Torts)

(Eric Turkewitz is a personal injury attorney in New York)