Oui! En Garde!

Medical Tort Reform –

A Pointed Solution At Last

Medical tort reform is like the half-dotty Aunt who shows up at all family gatherings to ask 20-somethings if they’ve solved that bed-wetting problem. A “yes, Auntie” gets you a round of embarrassing congratulations and a “No Auntie” gets an equally embarrassing round of encouragement.

“Shove it, Auntie!” isn’t an option, unless perhaps in South Carolina, where manners are clearly different. So Auntie usually wins. It’s the same for lawyers in medical cases.

“So Doctor, have you stopped your habit of malpractice?” a lawyer will demand with a wink for the jury. No matter which way the doctor answers, the jury will get a wink, the lawyer will get a huge fee. And the rest?

The doctor might get the shaft, a legal version of a colonoscopy in which a verdict is shoved upwards until all polyps of money are removed. Or the jury might shaft the patient.

All this dramatically increases the cost of health care, since doctors are forced to pay outrageous insurance premiums so they can afford lawyers to defend them against the outrageous charges of other lawyers representing patients and their insurance companies.

Critics of the current system have pointed out that it’s set up so lawyers and insurance companies always get paid while doctors and patients trade turns on the shaft. Reform, in the view of lawyers and insurance execs means mandatory washing of the shaft between users, perhaps by the pesky do-gooders who keep demanding limits on “pain and suffering” jury verdicts.

Turns out some of those pesky do-gooders are Republicans, so the following modest suggestion is sure to draw bipartisan support because it solves a current problem by returning to the past.

We don’t need to reform tort law, folks, we just need to make dueling legal again.

You know, with swords or pistols or knives or cudgels or whatever both parties feel will get the job done. And the job?

A “tort” in civil law is a wrongful act for which the inured party can seek damages. If you say a local lady in private business has seen more pumping action than a fire company, that’s a tort. If the fire company says the lady has a loose pumping gasket, that’s another. And if the doctor who was supposed to replace your left hip replaced the right instead, that’s still another.

Torts come in endless varieties but most boil down to an offense against one party’s honor, property or person. And that’s what duels once settled quickly and to the complete satisfaction of both parties since both winners and losers had judgment absolutely beyond appeal.

Of course, to get such a reform passed, we’re going to have to make certain that all the folks now in the game get at least something.

For insurance companies, we’ll pass a requirement that both duelists take out life insurance policies in the amount under dispute, naming the other party as a beneficiary. Skewer the doctor who charged you $150,000 for fixing the wrong hip and you get both money and satisfaction. If the doctor wins, he gets satisfaction and his fee.

Lawyers, of course, will want their cut of the new action, so the new law will have to permit them to be co-duelists, able to dispatch either the opposing party or that party’s lawyer in return for a pre-agreed split of the insurance proceeds.

A side benefit to the Republic is that each such decision will necessarily result in the death of at least one lawyer, hardly a stampede of legal reform, but nonetheless one less ass in the herd.

The Obama administration is committed to passing health reform this year.

As they say, “Yes We Can!”

But let’s add tort reform:

“Oui! En Garde!”

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G.O.P. Tar Baby Tactics

Republican Secret Strategy Revealed

Seasoned political observers said Republican reaction to President Obama’s Wednesday speech on health care reform revealed new clues on Republican development and strategy.

Pointing out that most Republicans spent the evening sitting on their hands during Obama’s applause lines, analysts said it was a sound rebuttal to the charge that Republicans can’t find their asses with both hands. “The Republican party had both hands firmly in place for all to see,” said one GOP representative. Few Democrats denied the observation.

Others saw the passive Republican behavior as part of a secret Republican plan to deal with increasing Democrat demands and a shrinking Republican base by adopting a Tar Baby strategy.

Based on the folk-tale writings of Joel Chandler Harris, the Tar Baby strategy uses a dummy to smear and entangle anyone who tries to connect. An example was South Carolina Republican Representative Joe Wilson shouting out “You lie!” when Obama said the proposed health plan wouldn’t cover illegal immigrants.

That Wilson is from South Carolina affirms his dummy credentials, but close observers said he was stung by calls from both parties to apologize. Informed sources said he briefly considered South American airplane tickets for a reflective hike on the Appalachian trail using South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s map. Wilson ultimately apologized for his “lack of civility,” although some wondered whether fellow Republicans had applied pressure after considering the possible loss of illegal immigrant household help.

Meanwhile, designated readers at Republican pre-speech conferences also reportedly told lawmakers that B’rer Rabbit, the ensnared victim in the Tar Baby folk tale, escapes by convincing his captors to throw him into the briar patch. He convinces them he fears it most, but knows it’s his home and haven.

That reportedly energized Republican lawmakers to redouble their efforts to torpedo health care reform, secure in the knowledge that the electorate would throw them into the briar patch outer darkness most call home.

(In a side development, several Republican lawmakers reportedly expressed unease that Uncle Remus, the narrator in Harris’s folk tales, is an African American. Makes them nervous. They were reassured when designated readers explained that at the time of the narrative, Uncle Remus would have been owned by a Red State person.)

Other Republicans at the conference listened to the designated readers and asked if those who set the Tar Baby in B’rer Rabbit’s path were engaging in malicious deception and misrepresentation. There was palpable relief when the readers confirmed that behavior, prompting one Republican member of Congress to mutter “glad we’re sticking to the basics.”

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President or Pretty Boy?

Tonight’s The Night For Obama

Tonight’s the night when America finds out if it elected a President in November or just a Pretty Boy who can show his teeth only when he smiles.

President Barack Obama will address a joint session of Congress and the rest of us on reforming our health care system. That Americans spend more and get less on health care is beyond dispute, but rational debate has disappeared beneath a wave of partisan point-scoring, most of it coming from the Rabid Right.

The Rabid Right strums a tune of Fear and Smear, Resent and Distort on the mindstrings of the under-educated and under-employed who form their base. Those who fear any change as another shove down the ladder become the natural allies of those who grow rich on the status quo. It is an ongoing spectacle of the exploited supporting their exploiters.

That’s one part of what a President must say tonight and one of the topics a Pretty Boy will dodge. Consensus and bi-partisanship and good feelings are all very fine, but the big decisions are about Right and Wrong and a President is elected to decide.

Decisions made are hollow unless actions follow. That’s another thing that sets Presidents apart from Pretty Boys. A Pretty Boy will support “universal health care” fervently in all ways that don’t involve doing something. A President will show his support by getting things done, making change happen, leading the country, not polling it.

President Obama and the Democrats have the votes in both the House and the Senate to pass a Health Care Reform bill. Republicans will howl, but it can be done without a single Republican vote. The Constitution doesn’t call for universal love, it calls for majority rule. President Obama and the Democrats have majorities – we don’t know yet whether they will rule.

If what we get tomorrow night are clear health reform goals, objectives and timetables, we’ll be listening to a President.

If the political message tomorrow is “We’ll remember who supported us and especially remember who opposed us,” we’re listening to a President.

If the only appeal to bi-partisanship is one to “do the right thing, not the political thing,” we’re listening to a President.

So here’s a hope that tonight’s address will be a Presidential Address.

We need one.

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President’s School Speech

A Response From O.W.N.

(President Obama’s address to students today on the traditional First Day of School has drawn partisan criticism. A text was released on Labor Day Monday. As a public service, Larry Blasko said is offering this rebuttal from Cassus Mentis, a West Virginia subsistence farmer and national spokesman for O.W. N.)

You don’t know me but I O.W.N. you,.

Now anti-slavery folks shouldn’t get all fidgety over that O.W.N. name. It’s just a natural reaction to the Godless Media what has tarred all folks who don’t agree with ‘em as “wingnuts.”

That’s so unfair. Any damned fool who has seen a wingnut knows that it has a Left Wing and a Right Wing. O.W.N. folks don’t mind being called nuts, but they’re damned unhappy about being called “Wingnuts” because it lumps them in with those Left Wings. That’s what prompted them and other God-fearing-right-wing-only folk to start the O.W.N. party, proclaiming to all that while some may think us nuts, we were One Wing Nuts, and that wing sure wasn’t the left one.

But as Aunt Mabel used to tell us, “When it’s time to Do Your Business, squat right down,” so here’s what’s wrong with President Obama’s message to school kids:

· President Obama’s text told kids “. . .what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.” O.W.N. says who’s this President guy to be telling students about school? As the prophets of O.W.N. have said, you do your own time.

· “Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.” That’s what the President said, but O.W.N. doubts that he means it. Is he saying that if you decide to be a crack dealer, you want to be a committed crack dealer? (Full disclosure, as them media mipsies like to say. O.W.N. has some members who were committed on account of crack, but they’re coming up for parole now and let he among us who is without convicted sin. . .you get my (snow) drift?)

· President Obama’s text told kids “…don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.” Well now ain’t that just as uppity as anyone can get? It’s all about Me! Me! Me! in that world, and why can’t you give up on yourself and your country anyway? Is this President trying to limit our freedom to give up on ourselves? Looks like it to us.

· Finally, and Cousin My Darling Wife, this is the worstest of the worst, so brace yourself. This President said “So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make?”

For sheer gall, sheer gumption, don’t that take the cake? Here’s this President asking folks to do something that makes a difference, and as any good O.W.N. conservative knows, we don’t much like differences. Any old boy who starts to do something different had better look to his coon hounds, as the saying goes..

I mean, if we start to be responsible for our ownselves, where we gonna wind up?

Respectfully for O.W.N., Cassus Mentis, Cousinhump, WV.

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