my head hurts.

[rkt]

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. (Reuters) - President Bush offered an unexpected reason on Monday for cracking down on frivolous medical lawsuits: "Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."
The Republican president, long known for verbal and grammatical lapses, included the anecdote about obstetrician gynecologists in his stump speech attacking Democratic presidential rival Sen. John Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards, a former trial lawyer.

At a rally of cheering supporters in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, Bush made his usual pitch for limiting "frivolous lawsuits" that he said drive up the cost of health care and run doctors out of business.

But then he added, "We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

Unfazed, Bush went on to deride his rivals as "pro-trial lawyer," and concluded, "I think you've got to make a choice. My opponent made his choice, and he put him on the ticket. I made my choice. I'm for medical liability reform now."


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=6162774

so, it's bad to be a litigation lawyer and sue doctors who may or may not be doing their jobs properly, but it's perfectly okay to encourage legistlature restricting the abortion skills an ob-gyn might practice to save a woman's life. (or not save her life, BECAUSE IT'S NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS.)

fuck. fuck. fuckity. fuck. fuck. fuck.

do not misuse the name of women in vain, goddamnnit.

x-posted appropriately

Comments

[rkt.livejournal.com]

i think my head will explode before election.

[hardvice.livejournal.com]

Tort reform is one of the worst ideas ever put forth. Everybody focuses on the multimillion dollar verdicts and settlements, but they are the exceptions—and generally they're in exceptional cases where the court has found sufficient negligence to warrant punitive damages against giant entities who would otherwise have no incentive to clean up their acts.

The tort reform lobby (heavily funded by big business, health care, and insurance) wants to make it seem like "frivolous" lawsuits are driving everybody's insurance costs sky-high. They're not; frivolous lawsuits generally don't win. Capping damages only hurts the people who are the worst off—the people most in need of recompense. Capping damages merely gives companies incentives to sell shoddier products, perform less safe services, and to cut costs at the expense of consumer's health and safety. That's not evil; that's just capitalism. Capitalism speaks costs and benefits, not ethics, and if it's cheaper to kill or injure people, then people will be killed or injured. The civil law system provides a much-needed artificial conscience to corporate America that would otherwise only be possible with draconian regulations.

Goddamn I hate this man.

What a tort ceiling says is that if you're killed, your life is worth less than the law would otherwise compute as compensation for your family. It says that it's more important that a drug company that poisons millions of consumers stay solvent than that we discourage drug companies from poisoning consumers in the first place. It says that the little guy plaintiff has no recourse and no tools at his disposal with any real power to affect misbehaving corporations and health care systems that don't care about health, just money.

[tbonestg.livejournal.com]

Well, the federal government is intimately involved in all forms of medicine, and if they're not, the states are. There are probably 100 drugs that the FDA is holding up that could save someone's life somewhere tonight. Of course, they're probably protecting us from another 1000 drugs that will kill someone.

But that's the nature of the beast. If the government is involved, then politics will follow shortly.

[rkt.livejournal.com]

the FDA is whole sepearate topic worthy of multiple rants at another time.

the point was, that bushie is making claims that just don't ring true.

he obviously doesn't give a fuck about women's health when he's trying to pass bans on life-saving procedures. it's incredibly insulting for him to waltz around sanctimoniously as though he actually "felt my pain", when he's directly causing it far more than any "frivolous" lawsuit ever could.