Trial BalloonEdwards blames big business; Bush blames lawyers.
Updated Friday, July 26, 2002, at 6:54 PM ETThursday, President Bush went to North Carolina to blame rising health care costs on malpractice lawyers. In a conference call with reporters and in Senate floor speeches Thursday and Friday, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., fired back. The 2002 elections are heating up, the 2004 presidential race is underway, and Bush has made his first risky wager: He's trying to counter the Democrats' two-sided issues with a three-sided issue.
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StumbleUponA one-sided issue is one on which the country overwhelmingly agrees. Terrorism is a one-sided issue. So is education funding. So is supporting charities, religious or not. A two-sided issue is one on which each party clearly defends one side and attacks the other. Tax cuts are usually a two-sided issue. So is environmental regulation. So is privatizing Social Security. A three-sided issue is a two-sided issue into which a third viewpoint has been injected. The debate between cutting taxes, spending more on programs, and maintaining taxes in order to pay off public debt is a three-sided issue. So is the debate between censorship, free speech, and parental control of what children can see.
A one-sided issue is what you reach for when you want peace. A two-sided issue is what you reach for when you have the advantage and you want a fight. A three-sided issue is what you reach for when your opponent has the advantage and you want to seize it from him.
In the summer of 2001, Bush was getting hammered on a bunch of two-sided issues. From tax cuts to health care to the environment, Democrats painted him as a servant of big business. Then came Sept. 11. All the two-sided issues were wiped out by a one-sided issue, just the kind at which Bush excels. His dad was sheepish and clumsy about voicing collective values. Bill Clinton looked as though he was lying even when he was telling the truth. Not Bush 43. He jumped on the terrorism issue and rode it to stratospheric approval ratings. Along the way, he mixed in one-sided classics such as leaving no child behind and loving a neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself.
Now things have gotten sticky again. The terrorism debate has advanced from fighting al-Qaida to thornier questions of resource allocation and bureaucratic reorganization. The economy is shaky, the stock market is in the toilet, and Democrats are pounding Bush over corporate corruption. This time, he isn't just pleading for unity. He's fighting back.
The issue Bush has seized on—twice in Alabama on July 15, and twice again in North Carolina Thursday—is tort reform. He has sworn up and down that he's getting tough on corporate cheaters, but polls show most Americans don't believe him. He needs a new culprit to attack, one that is as unpopular as thieving executives, more plausible as a target of Republican wrath, and capable of absorbing some blame for the country's economic troubles. That target is lawyers. "This is a way to change the subject of the economic debate from what's going wrong in the markets and at corporations to what the president is doing to fix things," a Bush adviser told the Washington Post.
The beauty of attacking plaintiffs' attorneys—"trial lawyers," as Bush likes to call them—is that they oppose the GOP on issue after issue (environmental litigation, terrorism insurance, investor lawsuits) but are hired guns. They lack the populist resonance of their clients. If you've been cheated by a CEO or refused treatment by an HMO or exposed to carcinogens by a polluter, people feel sorry for you, but nobody feels sorry for your lawyer.
In his speech, Bush exploited this gap, distinguishing the interests of malpractice attorneys from the interests of policyholders, taxpayers, and plaintiffs. "You pay either as a patient or you pay as a taxpayer," said the president. "Frivolous lawsuits drive up the cost of government health programs by over $25 billion every year. … What we want is quality health care, not rich trial lawyers." These attorneys don't really represent ordinary people, Bush suggested: They just "fish" for clients, and "the current system often doesn't serve the patient. … Sometimes the lawyers take up to 40 percent of the verdict—40 percent."
If trial lawyers don't fight for anyone, whom do they fight against? Not big business. They persecute "small business owners," says the president. In the context of medicine, they persecute the "good men" who cure the sick. "We want to help doctors to heal, not encourage lawyers to sue," Bush argued earlier this year. On this view, the malpractice attorney isn't just a hired gun. He's inherently the bad guy.
How do Democrats answer this attack? They don't. They simply take the lawyer out of the picture. You'd think this would be particularly hard for Edwards, since he is a malpractice lawyer, and a rich one at that. Surely that's one reason why Bush went to Edwards' state and complained about its liability insurance rates. But Edwards is an expert at taking himself out of the picture, because that's what an artful plaintiff's lawyer does. He focuses relentlessly on his client, forcing the jury—or in this case, the electorate—to choose between a poor plaintiff and a deep-pocketed defendant. He reduces the cast of characters from three to two.
Edwards' technique was on display on the Senate floor and in his conference call. He described "families whose children can no longer walk" or "have been blinded for life." Better yet, he let one of his clients do the talking. Christopher Griffin, whose daughter recently died after Edwards won a huge damage award for her family in a medical error case, excoriated the Bush administration's suggestion that plaintiffs such as he were "lottery winners." "Every time I go to my daughter's grave, it's hard to feel that way," said Griffin.
If Edwards can reduce tort reform to a two-sided issue, he can add it to the Democrats' populist arsenal. Bush's speech "fits a pattern with [this] administration when it comes to the interests of regular people competing with the interests of big corporations, insurance companies, HMOs, and energy companies," Edwards told reporters. To his colleagues, he lamented, "At a time when Americans are demanding more corporate responsibility … the president has gone to North Carolina today to ask for less corporate responsibility, to make it easier on insurance companies, and to make it harder on victims."
This isn't what Bush had in mind when he started this fight. But that's what you get for arguing with a lawyer.
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Remarks From The Fray:
MBA-Pres attacks JD-Congress. Lawyer-majority Congress bite president in the ass. By the way, Bush wouldn't be attacking the same frivolous trial lawyers who won the tobacco settlement, would he? Wasn't attacking "trial lawyers" a big part of Bush I's re-election campaign, too? Isn't this kind of esoteric, Cato Institute concept of populism exactly the sort of thing that underscored how completely out of touch Poppy was? At least Poppy got a bounce out of kicking Saddam's ass. Between this, Intifada II, the Robert Blake case and the Inglewood police beating, it's feeling like the early 90s all over again.
-- Captain Ron Voyage
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Sympathy is in tort reform reform. Edwards can remind people of this or that but what they will remember most is a chubby guy suing Mickey D's and Burger King for making him fat. I suggest that the Democrats get off their butts and take a winning stance like debating invading Iraq instead of agreeing when they shouldn't and nit picking when they are going to lose. You have no idea how angry the public is with lawyers who reap big money by suing anything that moves. The Democrats must win in November but if they keep this up they will lose the edge I believe they have the same way the Republicans lost it by nit picking Clinton.
-- marylb
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We all keep hearing about the high cost of medical services, medical insurance and medications.
In fact, the Dem Party has begun railing incessantly on the subject - and I think they are correct when they claim that fees and costs to the consumer have gotten out of hand.
But, ask yourself how the costs have spiraled out of control.
If your mind's eye wandered over to take a look at a major constituency of the Left - the TRIAL LAWYERS - you would be correct!!
This group that understandably supports their own greed by supporting those that support them - the Dem Party - has done more to jack up the cost of doing medical business than any other entity, bar none. Since my company designed, manufactured, and provided diagnostic/electronic equipment and specialized surgical supplies to the industry, I know something of what I speak.
For example, here in Nevada the high cost of malpractice insurance has closed many emergency trauma centers statewide. Some of these centers are now re-opening as the state has jumped in to help pay the premiums - yes, at your expense and mine. Doctors have bailed out because of the cost of insurance brought on in a state (like most) that has no cap on punitive damages in malpractice suits.
In short, many doctors can't afford to practice their craft.
Now, I grant there are some "hacks" out there that the AMA has been protective of, and this has not served the system well, but - attorneys have been feasting for years on a tort system that has often granted $100 mil punitive damage settlements - these settlements have been over and above those awarded as general damages.
What it means is that the system has sometimes meant the lottery for victims of poor medical care/performance, but has meant a hardship for everyone else - and please keep in mind, many cases and their settlements are bogus - with the huge settlements often the result of good theatrics and an under-educated jury.
Just something to think about as the trauma center near you closes its doors!! And this is yet another issue demogogued by the Left.
-- ELMER FUDD
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It's complicated. Medicine is important and complicated and difficult, and when a doctor screws up and hurts a patient through negligence (as opposed to a well-intentioned and reasonable course of action that just doesn't work out), the victim suffers a lot of harm. Reasonable people can differ about the facts of a case and then you need lawyers and possibly a jury to straighten it out.
Even apart from the costs of jury awards, just staging a trial is staggeringly expensive. Justice doesn't just grow on trees--it requires time and effort from highly-trained professionals and that time and effort doesn't come cheap. That's capitalism.
Doctors sometimes screw up. When they do, it's expensive to sort it out. Doctors will need insurance to cover that, and yes, they'll pass that cost along to their customers. That's capitalism again, by the way.
Blaming lawyers for the cost of malpractice insurance is like blaming the pilot for the high cost of an airplane ticket. Riding an airplane, living under the protection of the rule of law, these things don't come cheap. If you don't like paying, try going without.
-- Laertes
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It would be nice if we could find a single group, such as the trial lawyers, to blame for the ridiculous inflation of health care costs, but it is not practical. Besides the fact that the insurance companies themselves are gouging consumers, you must consider the fact that an absolute majority of those working in "the health care industry" today perform strictly administrative functions. For example, I live in an essentially rural community and there is only one hospital in our county. Directly across the street from that hospital is a building housing a seven-doctor "medical group." There are more than 50 people employed in that building, including the seven doctors, one nurse-practitioner, six nurses, two pharmacists and three pharmacy assistants. Thus, only nineteen people are involved directly in the delivery of health services, while over 60% are engaged in the details of administration, compliance, billing, and so on. This situation is typical in an industry where costs have gone so high that the provider no longer expects payment directly from the customer.
There are other factors as well--the doctors themselves feel entitled to average personal incomes in excess of $300,000 annually, but they would have you believe that they are a collection of selfless Marcus Welbys, infinitely wise and wholly dedicated to serving the public. Actually, greed runs the industry, and the proliferation of state and federal programs to address the high costs has simply created more opportunities for those who wish to take advantage of the system.
-- 1-2-Oscar
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(7/29)