The Tort Reform Lie
Texas has something amusingly called “tort reform.” What this really amounts to is that a known defective product or a drunk doctor can maim you but you can’t collect from them by winning a lawsuit because Republican controlled government protects insurance profits over citizen’s bodies.
Reform, my patootie. It’s buyer beware even though the average citizen has no idea that there are internal memos within say, a tire company, where they know their tires are defective but it’s cheaper to pay the lawsuits for injury and death than it is to fix the defect. Honest to God, this really is happening.
And Lord forbid you can sue a doctor who cut off your arm instead of your appendix because he was drunk during the surgery.
Republicans got this through the Texas Lege by claiming that we were going to save enough money to buy everybody a pink Cadillac if we just wouldn’t let people sue businesses or the insurance companies that insure doctors. They claimed there was something called “lawsuit abuse,” even though there were already legitimate and effective remedies for that.
Lawsuit abuse, may patootie. The goal of tort reform was to protect insurance companies and big business.
And how about those savings the Republicans promises us?
Oh, fiddlesticks, of course that didn’t happen.
A new study found no evidence that health care costs in Texas dipped after a 2003 constitutional amendment limited payouts in medical malpractice lawsuits, despite claims made to voters by some backers of tort reform.
The researchers’ findings come after a report last fall in which the Ralph Nader-founded consumer group Public Citizen said it found Medicare spending in Texas rose much faster than the national average after tort reform.
So, you got screwed twice. You lost your constitutional right to go to court and it ended up costing you more money.
The next time Republicans say they are going to do something nice for you, by “you”, they mean “insurance companies.”
I just hate Republicans. God help me, I do.