Why Democrats Oppose Real Tort Reform

For those who are not first year law students, a tort is any civil wrong in which a damaged victim can seek legal redress. However, in the current social climate, liberals have sought to use the tort as a means of social, not legal redress. Personal injury lawyers, motivated solely by the greed of a payoff if successful, institute lawsuits for any and all reasons against “deep pockets” for “perceived” wrongs. These reprobates suffer nothing for filing the most spurious charges, even gaining admiration amongst your average Moonie  for taking down another productive enterprise. In this discussion, we’ll stick to insurance companies. These frivolous suits also create incentives for doctors to do all sorts of unnecessary tests to prevent someone coming back later and saying “You should have tried everything”. It’s called defensive medicine. For this reason, lack of tort reform costs every man, woman and child in America $838 in 2008.

That’s not much compared to how much your insurance premiums are going to go up if the Obamacare Scheme passes, sure. But its still a lot of money.

Now, there has been some talk about Obama bringing in some notion of “tort reform”. This is nothing but a blatant lie. He told HHS it could move forward on some “pilot projects” for tort reform. This is like saying he’s all for nuclear power while shutting down the one place you can dispose of spent nuclear fuel in Yucca Mountain. Its completely dishonest.

In all its blatant hyprocrisy, radicals and progressives shout from their yogurt huts and spin classes about how “the rest of the world does it!” when it comes to socialized medicine. Yet, the “loser pays” system is also done throughout the rest of the western world, and they blithely ignore this reality. Socialized medicine and loser pays go hand in hand in all those countries. Why wouldn’t Democrats scream and cry about bringing it here? Because the Democrat party is beholden to the Trial Lawyer dollars ripped from the purses of shareholder grandmothers and grandfathers so they can elect more John Edwards.

And you want to know something really funny? A majority of Americans support serious Tort Reform, while a majority do not want the Democrat Health Care Bill. Even a broken watch is right twice a day. Progressives and radicals really have to try to be this wrong…

Democrats lately have trotted out the line that the CBO has rated the GOP tort reform and found it would only save one quarter of 1% of GDP, or something like that, and use it as a demonstration of how tort reform would do little. Whatever. This is not a defense of GOP tort reform. If that’s the case, shame on them. Tort Reform and saving every man, woman and child in America most or all of $838 a year and stopping unnecessary defensive medicine is not one quarter of 1%. Its a serious issue. And government spending should be counted as subtracting from GDP so its considerably higher actually, but that is another discussion.

Democrats jump up and down and wave their arms and cry that if trial lawyers aren’t allowed to collect those $400 million paydays, they wouldn’t be motivated to take those hard cases. Not true. If you forced the blood suckers to pay for those mendacious lawsuits they enjoy filing for no particular reason, they would still take on the lawsuit, and win if they had a case. That’s the reality in the rest of the civilized world. The defendants would not be held up every time someone wanted to extort money. You can argue that the company who allowed its defective product on the market knowingly shouldn’t even be in business. But you don’t have the right to hold up innocent shareholders to extortion without first proving guilt. That’s the American way.

Jesse Jackson is your average personal injury lawyer, showing up anywhere the proper percentage of the right minorities haven’t applied for jobs, or been approved for housing loans (never mind Asian minorities who don’t matter in almost any discrimination scenario). They show up, demand a certain amount of money or threaten to take legal action involving dozens of lawyers who clean up every time progressives demand a bribe. Legal action which can cost millions and even mean ruin for many companies and hurt for the little old ladies depending on those stock dividends to live. There is no compassion. No justice. No real hurt. Just threats and intimidation. What’s more, even when there is a real claimant, its not they who benefit. The average claimant receives only 46% of the judgement.

Democrats are completely unwilling to take the lead on important health reform. The clods instead are focused on this worthless attempt to manage more of Americans lives instead of on real problems. Republicans may not be up to the challenge. Independents and moderates must speak at the ballot box to this important issue.


About Terry Crowley