|
Today's Health Care Check-Up: - July 18, 2000
In case you missed it, following are excepts from an article in this
week's issue of Time magazine about the trial lawyers' campaigns
against numerous industries - including America's health care
system:
"Are Lawyers Running America?
Their lawsuits are setting policy on guns, tobacco and now
HMOs.
Who elected them?"
"[Dickie] Scruggs isn't looking for money - or at least just money. He
is aiming to use his lawsuit to do what Bill and Hillary Clinton and the
leaders of Congress have failed to do: rewrite the rules of American
health care. If Scruggs succeeds, medicine will join a growing list of
industries, from asbestos to tobacco to guns, that are being overhauled
and regulated by trial lawyers and lawsuits rather than by elected
officials. ... Ask Scruggs if trial lawyers are trying to run America,
and he doesn't bother to deny it. 'Somebody's got to do it,' he says,
laughing."
"But is this any way to run a country? Critics of law-by-trial-lawyers
say its an undemocratic way for a nation to decide its approach to
controversial issues like handgun and tobacco regulation. The key players
- the lawyers and often the judges - are unelected, and most of the
critical decisions in litigation are made in secret."
America's trial lawyers are already out of control.
Imagine how far they'll go if Congress allows new health care lawsuits
against HMOs and employers.
Oppose the Kennedy-Dingell-Norwood Patients' Bill of
Rights
|