Duke: Did you happen to watch the “60 Minutes” segment featuring President Obama? He did address the tort reform issue, after Steve Kroft brought it up, but then seemed to backtrack in terms of how to deal with it.
I think there are several good European models, including the French, Swiss and British, that are worth looking at.
However, until we’re truly ready to address the specter of “defensive medicine” (doctors performing needless tests and procedures due to a fear of litigation), I think we lose a major means of both controlling the system (in terms of directing truly necessary treatment) and controlling the costs (establishing caps and fundamentally reforming how risks/exposures/liabilities are handled).
Further, I believe as long as we allow cretins like Rep. Wilson to heckle a President addressing a joint session of Congress and then claim victim status, we lose the ability to engage in a meaningful, FACT based, dialogue.
I’m as conservative as they come, but that outburst was unconscionable and perfectly illustrates that we’re allowing the yahoos, ideologues and dolts to control the discourse and thus the system. Enough is enough.
