Taking a Sabbatical

Recently the President gave his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. It was hailed by most observers as one of his greatest.

The full speech which is well worth listening to, and which has been hailed as a seminal one, can be seen and heard here.

To hear an excellent discussion of it by Shields and Brooks I urge you to listen to a segment from the PBS Newshour. On the left of that site you will find a listing of recent videos. Look for those under 12/11, scroll down until you find the heading, "Shields and Brooks Dissect Obama's Nobel Speech" and click on that.

With that I must once again regretfully take a sabbatical of uncertain duration.

I say regretfully because so many issues that I feel I could beneficially address, remain.

Health Care Reform is so complicated that even though I have addressed this issue more than once, there is still so much I have not covered and which I believe I could shed light on.

Immigration reform is another; Same Sex marriage, the so called war on drugs, end of life issues, lobbyists and election reform, the filibuster and the state of our Democracy, to name a few that immediately come to mind.

Senator Lieberman has become an increasingly controversial figure and there is much to be understood, both about the man and the pragmatism that applies in dealing with him, or for that matter with other issues that divide Democrats in the face of adamant and united Republican opposition and the need for 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

The issue of torture and rendition and how we should deal with this legacy deserves focus.

Unfortunately, to address these or other issues, not just with of the top of the head opinions, but with carefully researched facts, which is the only way I care to do it, is extremely time consuming. In addition to distributing these commentaries to some 500 people by e-mail I also publish them in my local newspaper and the ensuing debate distributed as comments takes up more research and more time, not to speak of the time it takes for distribution and posting the comments on my blog, where I now have an extensive archive of past commentary along with extensive comments. I intend to keep adding to that archive.

For better or for worse I do have another life which often becomes neglected in my singular focus on my political commentary. Periodically I must attend to personal matters. And so I take temporary leave.

Until then - See you later! Arrivederci, Au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen, ω˙¯‡Â˙¨ 안녕히, 가세요 and До свидания.

The War in Afghanistan

 As I write this it is before the President has announced his policy. This is deliberate because I did not want my views to be influenced by the President's decision.

What disturbs me is that it is a very complicated decision and yet most people, whether Left or Right hold strong opinions lacking nuance or even real understanding.

Thus Cheney, our former V-P who dithered for eight years about having a real strategy in Afghanistan, or about adequately sourcing it, accuses our President of dithering because, unlike our previous President, Bush, he has a deliberative consultative way of reaching decisions. Instead of going, as the former President did, “by his gut”; he takes two month to reach a considered conclusion. To the former V-P it seems everything is a no-brainer, whether it is torture or escalating the commitment of our overstretched troops, and his Republican allies in the Congress are no different.

The hawks even go so far as to argue that we could have and should have won in Vietnam. See the article in Newsweek of November 16 by Evan Thomas and John Barry but that is so unhinged from reality that it is hardly worth time and effort in refuting, for it assumes that it was important for us to win in Vietnam, which subsequent developments have disproved. Losing did not affect our security (the domino theory was wrong) and today we have friendly relations with that regime. In fact it seems that losing in Vietnam had more positive results than winning in Korea, for N. Korea is a hostile state while Vietnam is an important trading partner. As for “we could have won” assumes infinite patience on the part of the American Public and a level of military firepower that might well have inflamed the region in a conflagration, (we dropped more explosives on little Vietnam than on all the axis countries in WW II) which could have set off the 3rd World War.

On the other hand many in the liberal camp, such as Bob Herbert, writing in the New York Times of November 8, 2009, without evaluating the security aspects of the Afghanistan war, seem to feel, in his words that, “We’re worried about Kabul when Detroit has gone down for the count.” That is a wrong and simplistic, though a populist analysis. When we have problems at home it does not follow that we should ignore the problems away from home, and our security can never be dismissed so easily. Would Herbert take similar attitude toward the people of Porto Prince in Haiti. Would he reject, for example, Obama's inspirational words in his inaugural address, "To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds." Would he also say, “We’re worried about Porto Prince when Detroit has gone down for the count.” 

Others are ready to equate Afghanistan with Vietnam and to call for a quick end to our involvement."

As I see it, neither conclusion is obvious and those who see ‘the right course so easily” have not considered all its ramifications.

I have heard that we need not commit more troops to Afghanistan because there is actually no real danger to our security from there and that if Al QAEDA does not find a sanctuary there, they will find it elsewhere, in one of the failed states on the African continent. But if that were so they would have already moved, because they have not had a safe haven in Afghanistan for years, are wandering without real bases, as they roam in the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan. So the argument that withdrawing from Afghanistan and letting the Taliban/Al QAEDA return does not appear to be valid. Of course, The Taliban and Al QAEDA are not one and the same, but until the Taliban chooses to break the link it might as well be, and there is no indication that they are prepared to do so.

There is also the danger that the Taliban, which now uses Pakistan as a safe haven to attack in Afghanistan, could if in power in Afghanistan use that area as a base to destabilize Pakistan, and that is a far greater danger, though Pakistan, at least for now, seems not very enthusiastic about our stepped up activities in its neighboring state, arguing instead that the more pressure that is brought to bear on the Taliban, the more they are pushed into Pakistan with destabilizing results. This leaves the issue in the grey area to say the least. We are in a situation where we are damned if do and damned if we don’t.

And yet it seems that if we could succeed in keeping the Taliban from overrunning that poor country at a cost that is not excessive in lives and/or treasure it would appear to be the wise thing to do.

But in Shakespeare’s words, “There’s the rub,” for at the moment the Taliban are in the ascendancy. On the other hand that is the direct result of the neglect and inattention given this vital theater while resources where devoted to the wrong place, in Iraq.

Should we not now at least for a limited period see if we can retrieve some limited success from that neglect?

Thus I discount as nonsense the hawks as represented by Cheney and Thomas, but that does not resolve the issue of withdrawal or for that matter a surge. Certainly, the dishonesty and corruption of the Karzai regime does not bode well.

Nor do I join those who feel that the President should be bound by his generals’ recommendations. Our founding fathers, wisely made the President Commander in Chief, not as Bush/Cheney claimed, to enhance the President’s power over the Congress, but to make sure that such important decisions are not made by generals, who have been wrong time and time again, (Lincoln had to keep changing commanders) they misled us in Vietnam, and have never been known for not wanting anything but more troops.

I conclude that it is too dangerous and too early to give up on Afghanistan, but that we must have, if not time lines, performance tests, so we do not get bogged down in an endless and fruitless war. The benefits of a successful pacification of the area are too great not to allow for one last and limited effort.

This view will not earn me kudos from Right or Left, but there are times when the middle is not a straddle, but the right place to be.  

The Achievements of Barack Obama

 From the viewpoint of Republicans, who lately have chosen to dress themselves in the mantle of Independence and pretended bipartisanship, Obama has achieved nothing worthwhile, and every act of his and every achievement has been a detriment. That is not surprising.

But what we are increasingly finding is that it is his base that is complaining, “too slow” and some of his acts are a betrayal of their agenda and of his promises. It's strange, but it wasn't so long ago that the complaints were "Too Much To Soon?" prompting me to write a commentary by that name on April 9, 2009 rebutting that fallacious viewpoint.

I think that the criticism is factually wrong and strategically counterproductive. It ignores that Obama has done more in his first year in office since any President, save for FDR or Lyndon Johnson.

So what has he done so far? I will list some of these at random.

 He saved this country, and arguably the whole world from an economic meltdown on the scale of the ’29 depression and he did it in record time. On October 12, 2009, eight months after his inaugural Fox Business reported, “The recession, which began in December 2007, (almost a year and a half before his inaugural) has ended…” On November 25, 2009 Reuters reported, “U.S. consumer spending rises, jobless claims tumble." 

   If he had accomplished nothing more in his first year than this, it should have marked his Administration as one of solid achievement. Instead both Left and Right are complaining about an unemployment rate, a lagging indicator, as being at 10.2%. When the Reagan Administration without having to cope with an incipient meltdown, allowed unemployment to become almost as bad at 9.7%, I do not recall either the Left or the Right indulging in the kind of hand wringing we see now. In economic terms there are still certain laws. The economy must revive, and job growth will inevitably follow. The economy has revived, and only the disgruntled and those disconnected from reality will do other than applaud.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace prize was derided by both Left and Right on the ground that he had not yet accomplished anything, but his success in changing the standing and the image of the US throughout the world, and in fostering diplomacy instead of endless confrontation with friend and foe alike, was a major accomplishment.

He started the process to reform our Health Care System and has succeeded in getting it through the House. Even if it eventually flounders in the Senate, it is his leadership that has brought it to a point never before reached in American history.

But a number of things have already been accomplished in the Health Care area through the stimulus package, e.g. $19 billion has been allocated to help implement an electronic medical record system.

On infrastructure the Department of Transportation has approved 2,500 highway projects.

A $2,500 tax credit to help offset the cost of tuition (among other expenses) for those seeking a college education has been enacted. Nearly five million families are expected to save $9 billion.

 He has saved the jobs of untold numbers of teachers and in the process saved the primary educational system in many states throughout the country.

He saved the auto industry and untold millions of jobs in the process.

He allocated $2 billion in stimulus cash for advanced batteries systems. One high-ranking Hill aide called battery technology "the next big frontier" in the automotive world.

Appropriated $5 billion in aid commitments "to bolster Pakistan’s economy and help it fight terror and Islamic radicalism" within the country.

Set up an office of Urban Policy in the White House.

Through the Recovery Act, DOJ secured $2 billion for Byrne Grants, which funds anti-gang and anti-gun task forces. The money, cut during the Bush years, should have massive ramifications on inner-city crime and violence.

 Signed Schip legislation giving health coverage to millions of children by a bipartisan vote.

 Pushed for and got unemployment insurance extended more than once by a bipartisan vote.

 The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 put under federal protection more than two million acres of wilderness, thousands of miles of river and a host of national trails and parks.

 He signed into law the Lilly Led-better Fair Pay Act, designed to make it easier for workers to sue over gender-based pay discrimination.

He cut taxes for 95 percent of American workers in his stimulus package.

Tightened limits on interrogation tactics by Central Intelligence Agency officers.

Removed financing restrictions on groups that provide or discuss abortion overseas.        
   
Granted California a waiver to regulate automobile tailpipe emissions linked to global warming.

Ordered the Transportation Department to issue guidelines that will ensure that the nation's auto fleet reaches an average fuel efficiency of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, or earlier.

The day after pill to stop unwanted pregnancies was approved by a new science based FDA.

Dealt effectively with a standoff with Somali Pirates.

 Changed Cuba policy allowing Cuban Americans unlimited travel and money transfers to relatives there.

 Signed an executive order reversing the ban on federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research.

 Restarted nuclear arms reduction talks with Russia.

 Released the Bush Torture Memos, almost without redactions.

Announced a new policy on medical marijuana raids by the federal government.

EPA adopted the position that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare.

   Stopped the deployment of an ineffective missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

   Took away from perpetrators of 9/11 the positive appellation of enemy combatants and treats them as mass murderers and common criminals, bringing them before the bar of justice.

Put Sonya Sotomayor on the Supreme Court.
   
   I have no doubt that there are many accomplishments that I have overlooked, but anyone who says the Administration’s accomplishments are meager, has a short memory or a convenient one. Carping from the Right is to be expected. Carping from the base is foolish and counterproductive.

Obama Walks on Water

Many thought Obama walked on water as in November of 2008 he swept to an election victory by the greatest margin in the popular vote in twenty years, gaining his victory by a margin of 53.41% compared to George H.W. Bush's victory of the hapless Michael Dukakis by 53.9%, though Obama brought out a far larger total vote, gaining almost 57 million votes compared to Bush’s just short of 49 million. 

His resounding triumph was not entirely due to his charisma or his political appeal, for he ran at a time when the incumbent President and his Republican majority in the Congress had brought the country to the brink of a repeat of the great depression of ’29, where the unemployment rate had gone from 2.5% in 1926 to 35.5% in 1933, when Roosevelt took office. When Roosevelt finally took measures to stem the downturn it took four years to bring the unemployment rate down to just over 20%. See my post from March 12, 2009 and the graph displayed.

Now let us imagine what would have happened if like in the period preceding and following the market crash of ’29 the same policies had been followed as they had in the ‘20s. It is not inconceivable that similar disastrous unemployment would have resulted. Fortunately, it was recognized even by the incumbent President Bush that we were having a banking crisis, which in many ways resembled that of the 20’s, and Bush, who had always preached laissez faire capitalism, took vigorous steps to stem the looming disaster despite his own party in the Congress deserting him. At the same time the long time Chairman of the Fed, Allan Greenspan, long an apostle against regulation, said with disarming frankness “ I was partially wrong" and "I have found a flaw,” but the members of The Republican Congress who correctly have a reputation for “ having never forgotten anything” and “having never learned anything” show that they have learned nothing.

Last week the unemployment rate hit 10.2% and the public has discovered that Obama does not walk on water and has no magic wand. He is being hit with a populism from both left and right that denounces him for helping the banks instead of main street, ignoring the fact that the first thing Roosevelt dealt with was also the banking crisis, with his bank holiday and then guaranteeing deposits. Unfortunately, unlike in Roosevelt’s time when banks were many and small, we now have the behemoths that are “too big to fail.” But of course he is helping main street when he helps the banks, and his stimulus program directly aids main street, its principle weakness having been that it did not allocate enough money to the states to help them out of the crisis, forcing them to either raise taxes or cut back on programs desperately needed in this recession. 50 billion dollars was cut from the stimulus program to aid the states to get the three Republican votes needed to stop the Republican filibuster.

Both Left and Right denounce Obama for not having stopped unemployment from rising as though there were a magic wand that would turn things around by the mere waving of it. As Obama has pointed out the Ship of State does not turn like a motor boat and measures taken nine month ago, which is when the stimulus bill was passed, can not be expected to already affect the unemployment rate, since as all economists tell us that the employment always lags in an improving economy. While for the moment it is little comfort to those unemployed (of course those unemployed take little comfort even when unemployment is low) the economy has now turned around and Reuters, among others, reports, “Productivity surge signals Job Growth to follow. But the agitation about the high unemployment rate is difficult to understand in any case, for the unemployment rate under the Republican hero, Ronald Reagan, was even higher, and I don’t remember the hand wringing then, nor is there much emphasis in our media (Liberal media?) that Reagan presided over a slightly higher unemployment rate, with the unemployment rate then having reached 9.7% more than a year after he was inaugurated, as compared to Obama in office a mere nine month. See the graph and comments on Mark J. Perry's web site.

But as I said he is being attacked from both Left and Right with, e.g. David Brooks in the New York Times of November 6, writing he is doing too much and Paul Krugman writing he is doing too little. It may be that what he is doing is just right, though I would like to see the $50 billion cut from aid to the states restored.

But Obama is also being hit with complaints from the Left that his promises during the campaign are not being fulfilled fast enough, which ignores that our system of government is not designed for fast action with its checks and balances (See Anna Quindlen in Newsweek of November 2) and the non-constitutional requirement of 60 votes in the Senate, a Clinton era Republican invention. But the extent of the obstacles facing Obama are misunderstood and understated even by the above referenced article of which, e.g. incorrectly states with respect to the military policy dubbed, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Transformation is within his grasp, in a pen, a signature, an executive order” which is patently untrue, for it is enshrined in a statute of the Congress which was passed on November 30 1993 in response to President Clinton’s attempting to abolish discrimination against Gays in the Armed Forces by executive order.

As for Obama’s paucity of accomplishments in his first nine months, that too is an invention, or at least a misconception, that I will address hereafter.

   As for understanding why the voters turned to Republicans in New Jersey and Virginia in the the last election, thus turning to the very people responsible for the present crisis, I leave that to the pundits.

   I can analyze issues. I do not pretend to understand voters.

John Corzine for Governor of New Jersey.

I am going to vote for John Corzine for governor of NJ on Tuesday November 3 for many reasons, but the most important is that he is not a Republican, and that a vote for him is the only vote that will prevent the election of the Republican candidate.

There was a time when I might have voted for a Republican. There was a time when there were some decent Republicans around, like Senator Case of New Jersey, or Senator Javits of New York, or Senator Morse of Oregon. But the big tent Republican Party is no more. They have systematically purged all who do not fit the ideological bent of the party.

To be sure the Republican Party had its genesis in the election of Lincoln and the abolition of slavery, but by 1877 less than a dozen years after the martyrdom of Lincoln, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes sold out the newly freed slaves in order to gain the Presidency. The website Travel and History put it this way: “To the four million former slaves in the South, the Compromise of 1877 was the ‘Great Betrayal.’ Republican efforts to assure civil rights for the blacks were totally abandoned. The white population of the country was anxious to get on with making money. No serious move to restore the rights of black citizens would surface again until the 1950s.”

 Thereafter, Republicans and their big business allies dominated the political landscape with such “luminaries” as Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover representing a dominant Republican Party. Lincoln must have been revolving in his grave. This sorry lot were were interrupted only by the ascendancy of Teddy Roosevelt, who became the only distinguished Republican during this whole era leading up to the Great Depression, and he was never the choice of the Republican establishment. After being elected governor of New York, he was kicked up to the Vice-Presidency to get him out of the way, and much to the dismay of the Republican establishment became President upon the death of McKinley. The Great Depression was not the sole fault of Herbert Hoover. It became inevitable through the policies of three Republican Presidents from 1921 to 1929, eight years, which in many ways resembled the eight years of the Bush Administration. Fortunately for the US and indeed the world, Bush who was only the head of the monster, realized in the last year of his Administration that we were facing a potential repeat of 1929 and took drastic steps to avert disaster, which true to form were opposed by the majority of his party. Also happily, while it took four years between the onset of the Depression in 1929 and the inaugural of FDR, it took only one year between the beginning of the recession of 2008 and the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009.

To be sure the Democratic Party for most of the years after the Civil War was identified as the party of racism and the Republican party continued to bask in the image of Lincoln, but this was the result of the Democratic Party being a House divided against itself, with the part from the old South hanging on to the vestiges of slavery, and the Northern part becoming increasingly the party of emancipation and Civil Rights. Such Democratic Senators as Bilbo and Eastland of Mississippi, and Richard Russell of Georgia along with Strom Thurmond of South Carolina were determined to hold onto the quasi slavery that continued in the Unreconstructed South while northern Democrats like Lehman of New York and Humphrey of Minnesota worked for reform. Thurmond even ran for President in 1948 on the Dixiecrat Party. But the Nixon Administration’s Southern strategy changed that and invited such segregationists into the Republican fold. Thurmond became a Republican in 1964, and as late as 2002 the Republican about to become majority leader of the Senate, Trent Lott, hailed Thurmond with these remarks, “I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either." See The Nation for more background on Lott.

The Republican Party gave us McCarthyism in the 1950’s and torture in this century and even the relatively benign Eisenhower ordered the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected President of Iran, Mohammed Mosedegh, and installed the hated Shah, which was directly responsible for the ascendancy of the present theocracy in that poor country.

   But what of New Jersey? The Star Ledger endorsed the 3rd party candidate, Chris Daggett, but the latest poll shows Daggatt garnering 9% of the vote, so a vote for Daggett is a wasted vote. The Republican candidate, Chris Christie, stands for all the Bromides of the National Republican party. He would be a disaster for the state and his election would be interpreted as a repudiation of Obama. His main attack on Corzine is that NJ has the highest property taxes in the nation, but he forgets to tell us that neither the governor nor the State legislature has any control over property taxes, which are levied by the many towns and villages that dot New Jersey, and that New Jersey had the highest property taxes long before Corzine became governor. He tells us about the high unemployment rate of New Jersey, but he forgets to tell us that it is no higher than the National average and is the product of the Republican induced recession. He also forgets to tell us that New Jersey has the 2nd highest personal income per capita in the nation. As for the income tax, which is under State jurisdiction, New Jersey is 23rd in tax revenue as a % of personal income.

There are only two ways to reduce property taxes. One, with which I fully agree, was suggested by the NJ Chamber of Commerce in a Letter to the Editor in August of 2006. They wrote, “Property tax reform will only happen when there is consolidation of some of the more than 1,000 layers of government that currently have taxing authority” but only Governor Corzine of the three candidates has made any proposal that would further this objective. He has suggested that money should be put into a fund to incentivize municipal and school consolidations. This is the only sound idea on the table.

The other is to raise the income tax and finance our schools with those taxes. Since the main purpose for local property taxes is to fund local schools, changing the funding formula so that schools are funded by state taxes would lower property taxes and remove a major inequity in school funding.

But the biggest problem that New Jersey faces is its huge deficit, which is the direct result of the popular but shortsighted Republican penchant for tax cuts. When Republican Christie Whitman became governor in 1994, she cut the income tax by 1/3 but never found the savings that would offset this loss of revenue. The result, NJ is saddled with huge debt, the interest that goes with it, and no end in sight. Christie promises more of the same, but like all Republicans will not say what programs he will cut, or how he will finance the debt. If Christie is elected NJ will not long continue to be second in per capita income.

Continuing the Health Care debate

In my last commentary I took time off from the Health Care Debate to focus on the power of money in politics, and my concern with an impending Supreme Court decision, which would allow corporate and union money to dominate our political discourse. My article can be found on the web under the title: "Money and Politics". Before that I addressed Republican Talking Points on Health Care focusing primarily on McCain’s purported proposal.

Now I want to return to the Health Care debate where there continues to be a great deal of deliberate misinformation (lies) and also a great deal of just plain misunderstandings. Some of these can be found in the fears engendered in my own generation who have the best overall health insurance of any segment of the American population and it is a “Government plan” – in fact it is a single payer plan. But it was vigorously opposed by the same groups who now oppose reform for the rest of Americans and who now try to convince us that reform will either undermine Medicare or that somehow Medicare is in fact bad. Thus when we look at the Letters to the Editor column in the NY Times of October 6, we find, e.g. this, “Medicare, is riddled with fraud and waste, has trillions in unfunded liabilities and is not accepted by many of the best doctors.” I think this would be news to most Americans and particularly those over 65. Let me take that reverse order.

1.) Without doubt some doctors don’t take Medicare, though in my personal experience I have not encountered one. On the other hand most doctors don’t take one or more of the private insurance companies and I constantly see signs in doctors offices to the effect that they no longer take United Health Care or Aetna or some other private insurance carrier.

2.) “It has trillions in unfunded liabilities”. That is simply not true. Medicare is now having some relatively small short falls and the same people who oppose reform of the whole system, oppose taking the steps that will make Medicare viable for the foreseeable future. The Bush Administration imposed an unsustainable burden on the Medicare fund when it instituted Medicare Advantage.

Here is what one of my Libertarian physician friends, one Gerry Wachs had to say about it:

“The government pays the companies a fortune to offer them to Medicare beneficiaries. I pay $0 (that is free) each month and get doctor co-pays, $2500+ in free medications, twice a year free dental cleaning, a health club membership… free glasses, free hearing aid etc, etc. That replaces all the ancillary plans out there for backup coverage. The government was paying my plan administrator, Oxford, $9,000/year to cover me so of course they could offer all these benefits.”

I frankly question the $9,000 as an exaggeration, but whatever it is, this windfall for insurance companies cannot be sustained, but it is trumpeted as an attack on Medicare. In fact the reform plan, while cutting back on payments to insurance companies, increases payments to doctors to make sure they stay in Medicare

3.) “Riddled with fraud and waste.” It is well established that the costs of administering Medicare are way below those for private insurance, and while there surely is fraud and waste, that is unfortunately true in every plan, more so in private insurance than in Medicare.

Another letter to the Times from an ophthalmologist that Medicare doesn’t reimburse him for a cheap off label drug so he uses a more expensive one, which costs the government millions. He doesn’t say what items the private insurance companies refuse to reimburse, and examples of insurance companies refusing life saving cancer treatments are legion. He doesn’t even tell us whether private insurance companies reimburse for the drug, which Medicare has removed from its formulary, nor does he tell us what, “off label” means. An “off label” use of a drug means that the drug is being used for a purpose, which has not been proven to be efficacious and has not been approved by the FDA. Physicians use such off label drugs on the basis of their own anecdotal experiences or sometimes obscure articles in Medical Journals.

Finally, I come back to that favorite hobbyhorse of Republicans, Malpractice claims. In previous articles I have pointed out that none of the reforms that have been proposed or have been enacted in the states do anything to prevent or discourage frivolous claims. In fact we have protection against such claims at the present. If the facts proven at trial don’t support it judges can throw the case out and not let it go to the jury. If the judge finds the case to be frivolous he can penalize both the claimant and the attorneys. If that is not enough we could set up special courts, so malpractice cases would be tried before a panel of experts, but that is not what is being proposed. Reform in the states has meant, and means to its advocates in the Congress, limiting awards to “economic damages”, plus a maximum of $250,000 for pain and suffering, which as I have pointed out in the past, means that those who earn large incomes get millions, while a bank clerk who has lost his eyesight only gets that small amount which his/her earning capacity justifies, plus what is left otf the $250,000 after fees and expenses. This is not justice except to those who believe that only the rich have rights, and those who have less are the flotsam of our society to be discarded and disregarded.

The NY Times had an interesting article on the subject on August 31 entitled, “Would Tort Reform Lower Costs?” which is definitely worth reading. It quotes a law professor at the Pennsylvania School of Law as describing tort reform as “a red Herring” and points out that, “As the cost of health care goes up, the medical liability component of it has stayed fairly constant. That means it’s part of the medical price inflation system, but it’s not driving it. The number of claims is small relative to actual cases of medical malpractice.” He adds, “Medical malpractice tort costs were $30.4 billion in 2007, the last year for which data are available. We have a more than a $2 trillion health care system. That puts litigation costs and malpractice insurance at 1 to 1.5 percent of total medical costs. He adds: “We have approximately the same number of claims today as in the late 1980s. Think about that. The cost of health care has doubled since then. The number of medical encounters between doctors and patients has gone up — and research shows a more or less constant rate of errors per hospitalizations. That means we have a declining rate of lawsuits relative to numbers of injuries.” He adds: “…studies looked at the rate of claims and found that only 4 to 7 percent of those injured brought a case. That’s a small percentage. And because the actual number of injuries has gone up since those studies were done — while claims have remained steady — the rate of claims is actually going down.”

What we need is less medical malpractice – not a cap on the ability to be compensated for the harm done.