Yesterday’s White House health summit didn’t produce much of anything yesterday except to show that the Republicans and Democrats are still extremely far from agreeing on much of anything.
We do know from past statements from President Obama that he is interested in working with the leaders of the Republican party to try and do something about the rising, and sometimes obscene costs of professional medical liability insurance.
Yesterday however, we heard from the second most powerful Democratic in the Senate, Dick Durbin from Illinois. He brought up medical malpractice insurance and had some things to say that clearly shows that even though President Obama is interested in working with the Republicans on this, Democrats may not budge. Durbin, before he joined the Senate was a medical malpractice insurance trial lawyer that represented both sides.
A few quotes from Senator Dick Durbin, thanks to the transcript provided by the Washington Post.
The point that’s been made by the president is if we do believe the Congressional Budget Office, when Orrin Hatch asked them how much will we save if we implement the Republican plan on medical malpractice from the House, they said $54 billion over 10 years; $5.4 billion a year is a lot of money, except in the context of the $2.5 trillion bill that we pay each year for health care. It represents one-fifth of 1 percent of the amount of money we spend each year on health care.
The Congressional Budget Office said something else. They said and as you lose accountability for what the doctors and hospitals are doing, more people will die — 4,800 a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s reference to this study.
(Found this on Youtube, a small bit of Senator Dubin’s take on Medical Malpractice Insurance reform):
Now, the Institute of Medicine tells us 98,000 people a year die in America because of medical malpractice. I think there are things that we have put in this bill to change that. Most of you have heard of this Dr. Gawande. We’ve read him. I’ve talked to him on the phone. His “Checklist Manifesto” is a very basic approach to reducing medical errors, which is what we should be focused on. (more…)
