QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 8:31 A.M. ET:  I didn't think we'd ever be quoting Howard Dean here for our quote of the day, but occasionally even the daffiest among us make sense.  Dean, former Democratic national chairman, governor of Vermont, and a physician, was at a town meeting discussing health care, with Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia, one of the real basement-level Dems in Congress, a real bad piece of work.  But a truth came out.  From the Washington Examiner:

Whatever else he said Wednesday evening at the town hall hosted by Rep. Jim Moran, D-VA, former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate Howard Dean let something incredibly candid slip out about President Obama's health-care reform bill in Congress.

Asked by an audience member why the legislation does nothing to cap medical malpractice class-action lawsuits against doctors and medical institutions (aka "Tort reform"), Dean responded by saying: “The reason tort reform is not in the [health care] bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on. And that’s the plain and simple truth.”

Dean is a former physician, so he knows about skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance rates, and the role of the trial lawyers in fueling the "defensive medicine" approach among medical personnel who order too many tests and other sometimes unneeded procedures "just to be sure" and to protect themselves against litigation.

COMMENT:  Well, at least it comes out.  The issue of malpractice reform should be getting much more attention.  Reforming the tort system could possibly save upwards of $200-billion a year, but it won't be done for exactly the reason Dean stated. 

And then the Dems have the nerve to try to sell their health-care package as true "reform," when it lacks one of reform's most important elements.

August 27, 2009