ObamaCare Must Fail - Part 3

President Obama has, as part of his all-out effort to get his ObamaCare plan pushed through Congress, demonized both medical professionals and insurance companies in televised speeches. We know that the assault on insurance companies is purposeful as it gives us a strawman to hate which is always useful when you’re trying to get people to do something that may be against their own self-interest. As a community organizer steeped in the tactics of Saul Alinsky, the President knows that actions taken in both haste and hate usually are not thought through to their logical end. In this case, he’s counting on it because once we, the people, think it through, it won’t happen.

The President’s attack on the medical profession has been less effective because most people like and trust their doctors because we chose them. In his first attack he talked about doctors who, instead of treating the child’s sore throat, opted to remove the tonsils as they would make more money. In his second attack, he cited doctors who would amputate a diabetic’s foot rather than treat it to prevent the amputation because they would get “$30,000.00 to $40,000.00” for the amputation. Both statements are unconscionable lies and anyone really listening to what he said, instead of the sonorous way in which he said it, recognized them as such.

The thinking public knows that doctors are constrained from within and without the medical profession. From within by standard treatment protocols that subject them to professional review by their medical peers. From without by trial lawyers to gleefully wait for them to take an erroneous action so they can launch a lawsuit and line their own pockets with profit—if not from the doctor, from the doctor’s medical liability insurance. While the first constraint attempts, usually successfully, to ensure that the medicine practiced is in the best interests of the patient, the second ensures that all of us pay higher costs for our health care.

I think it is important for everyone to realize one important, immutable fact: we are responsible for the quality of our own medical care. It’s an amazing concept, I know, but it is our personal responsibility to ensure that our medical care meets our needs. Now, I’m sure that you are wondering how someone with no medical training can execute that responsibility; but it’s actually quite simple. We choose the best doctor we can find, we interview him to determine if we feel we can trust him to take the proper actions, then knowing we’ve made the best choice we can, we place ourselves in his hands.

Believe me, it’s not hard. I’ve done it. When I was diagnosed with prostate cancer I travelled around the Washington, DC, area until I met a doctor with the training, the background and the personality that gave me confidence in his ability. He operated using a robot and today I’m prostate-cancer free with no untoward side effects. I could have made an error in choosing, of course; but as I told my wife, he was my choice and if, in the end, it didn’t work out, I could only blame myself. My insurance didn’t pay for all of it, but I’m not complaining. I chose the best medical care I could find. I chose. Not a government body and certainly not some community organizer from Chicago.

In getting to know my doctor I quickly realized that being a successful doctor in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area is not easy and, while the rewards are high, so are the costs. I could see that were it not for the exorbitant premiums charged by insurers for medical malpractice insurance, the costs would be lower, both to the doctor and to me. The high cost of medical malpractice insurance is the direct result of an unabated assault on the medical profession by trial lawyers who look at a medical mistake as the equivalent to winning the lottery. This attitude coupled with the unbelievably high awards by sympathetic juries has driven up the costs for us all. And many times, the insurance doesn’t even bother going to trial because they know the juries will be sympathetic and a settlement would be cheaper. In the end, we all pay and it’s only the lawyers who get rich.

We all have liability insurance of some sort. Most states require liability insurance on cars. Home-owners always have liability insurance in case someone falls down on their front porch. But none of us have to pay the price doctors do for malpractice insurance. I remember talking with one surgeon several years back who said that his malpractice insurance ran into the six figures yearly and that had to be passed on to his patients, of course, which resulted in higher fees. That doctor had never been sued for malpractice, but his patients still paid for it.

HR 3200 completely ignores this 800-pound gorilla that sits gleefully in the doctor’s waiting room. Trial lawyers, many of whom have made the jump into the House or Senate, are a close ally of the Democratic Party thus the gorilla is ignored and the President shifts the blame to the doctors and the insurance companies. This is, of course, the practice of political expediency at its’ worst.

But if we are serious about bettering our health care this is an issue that must be addressed. The rampant assault on the medical profession must be brought under control. Erring doctors, nurses and hospitals should certainly be subject to sanctions, but an error should not equate to winning the lottery.

At present we have the ability to choose our own doctors and being able to choose a physician makes us, in a large part, responsible for our own medical care. For those of you who still think that socialized medicine is the answer—that is, after all, what the President is attempting to impose—then I would ask you this: Do you really think that we’ll be able to sue those who chose the doctor for us and direct which treatments we will be authorized to receive? Do you really think we’ll even be able to sue the doctor we didn’t choose?

As I said above, no serious—no true—reform of health care can be successful unless it addresses tort reform to remove the profit motive of today’s trial lawyers. It’s one thing to represent those who are wronged. It’s clearly another to use the law to win the proverbial medical lottery.