The Wall Street Journal and what is “not nothing”

Andrea Batista Schlesinger

The Wall Street Journal and what is “not nothing”

I read the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page every morning for the same reason I visit the Manhattan Institute's Web site: motivation by irritation.

And it happens that both shops are in lockstep on one of the conservative right's most important victories: tort reform.

What's that? Well, in short, it's the conservative right's term for eliminating any means by which regular people can hold powerful interests accountable. How so? Well, for starters, by capping the damages that regular people can receive from lawsuits for malpractice or negligence, which makes it nearly impossible for them to attract adequate legal representation, or by limiting people's ability to sue in the first place. In their view, all of these gosh-darn lawsuits for malpractice are driving up insurance rates (the insurance industry loves this argument, since they can continue raking in the dough while also pleading poverty to raise rates).

So I read with glee this week's WSJ editorial, "Mitt's Non-Miracle," that criticized the Massachusetts health care program recently voted in and signed by the governor for being enacted, in part, to address the drain on state resources created by the reliance of the uninsured on free government health care.

They wrote: "in 2001 the nationwide cost of such uncompensated treatment was $34.5 billion, or 2.8% of all health spending. That's not nothing, but neither has it been the major cost driver for private insurance that the Governor claims it is."

Interesting. Like with many terms used by the right wing whose meanings are somewhat fluid (victory, overspending, tax relief), so too is the phrase "not nothing." You see, a 2004 study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that:

- Malpractice costs amounted to an estimated $24 billion in 2002, which is less than 2% of overall health care spending
- Capping damages would lower health care costs by only about .4 percent to .5 percent, and the likely effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small

So, $34.5 billion is not a sufficient incentive to figure out how to proactively get people health insurance, but $24 billion is a sufficient incentive to dismantle our entire system of civil justice?

Consider me motivated!

Comments

Why not push to cap health insurance premiums to have the cap rated to wages earned? Then everyone high and low would have the best health insurance available. Of course that would never happen with the insurance lobbyist filling the pockets of our Representatives on both sides in both houses. The masses would not hear a peep about the plan sense the MSM would never dream of reporting anything they would see as anti-corporate and so we are left with the corporate backed tort reform that is a slap in the face of the little guy. Not nothing is something...
The bottom line is without a free press there is little if no hope that we the people can even begin to imagine change taking place in this country that the last Global Free Press Rating had the USA somewhere around number 26 Globally. Pretty sad huh? The Fed will not do it meaning breaking the MSN monopolies between the five corporations that will never happen not with the rubber stampers in office right now. The only way to bring any change to what is happening right now would be to pass laws at the state level forcing programs/channels that call them selves THE NEWS to report only facts and or make it a service. Forcing just being a service that reports facts at the state level will force the cable companies to drop station line-ups that are calling them selves THE NEWS that would mean losing millions in ad revenue for both the fake THE NEWS channels we see today and the cable companies. At the very least THE NEWS programs will have to state disclaimers during each broadcast that the show is entertainment only and if not get sued for lying by someone or the state that the lie was uttered and not corrected at the beginning of the next broadcast.
Now that would be something!! What can I say a boy can dream�.

By the way I like how I can see my comments ASAP not like The Huffington Post where I am yet to see any of my comments.

Sweet catch, but if you'd pointed it out it was the one person who wrote both views, then you'd have someone's head on an TCP/IP packet pike.

Instead you seem to be pointing out hypocrisy of the WSJ editorial board, which is hardly surprising, since they aren't all of a like mind in the first place.

In addition, sad as it may be for me to inform you, the left is not all of one mind, and therefore seems, by turns and pastures, self-contradictory.

In case you wondered about the phrase "by turns and pastures," it comes from a comment on a post on DMI blog that I wrote, from a sentence finished about a minute ago.

But thanks. The irritation factor of a recent Manhattan Institute Senior Slug Max Schulz has put a little fire in my belly, too.