{"id":1326,"date":"2004-09-09T11:51:40","date_gmt":"2004-09-09T18:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/health-care-crisis-blame-the-lawyers\/"},"modified":"2004-09-09T11:51:40","modified_gmt":"2004-09-09T18:51:40","slug":"health-care-crisis-blame-the-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/health-care-crisis-blame-the-lawyers\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Care Crisis? Blame the Lawyers!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Health Insurance Costs Soar, Workers Hit<\/a> By Kim Dixon, Reuters<\/p>\n

Health insurance premiums rose five times faster than U.S. workers’ salaries this year<\/b>, according to a survey released on Thursday that also showed slippage in the percentage of American workers covered by employer health plans. …<\/p>\n

The percentage of people receiving health-care coverage at work dropped 1 percentage point to 61 percent in 2004 from a recent peak of 65 percent in 2001, the Kaiser study found.<\/p>\n

“As a consequence, we estimate that there are at least 5 million fewer jobs providing health insurance in 2004 than in 2001<\/b>,” the report said. …<\/p>\n

The Kaiser survey comes soon after the U.S. Census Bureau in August reported more people went without health insurance in 2003, with about 15.6 percent of the population, or 45 million Americans, lacking any coverage.<\/b><\/p>\n

Health care costs are rising and our Fearful Leader has figured out why: frivolous lawsuits. And, gasp, the Democrats have a, shudder, Trial Lawyer on their ticket. The Party of Lincoln prefers to ignore that Lincoln was a trial lawyer. Anyway, notice Bush has exploited this issue for a long time, in spite of the facts. Facts, we don’t need no stinking facts. mjh<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

FactCheck.org President Uses Dubious Statistics on Costs of Malpractice Lawsuits<\/a>
\nTwo Congressional agencies dispute findings that caps on damage awards produce big savings in medical costs.<\/p>\n

The President holds out the prospect of major cost savings if Congress will pass a law limiting what injured patients can collect in lawsuits. He wants a cap of $250,000 on any damages for ‘pain and suffering’� and other non-economic damages. His administration projects savings to the entire economy of between $60 billion and $108 billion per year in health-care costs, including $28 billion or more to federal taxpayers.<\/p>\n

But both the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office criticize the 1996 study the Bush administration uses as their main support. These nonpartisan agencies suggest savings — if any — would be relatively small.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health Insurance Costs Soar, Workers Hit By Kim Dixon, Reuters Health insurance premiums rose five times faster than U.S. workers’ salaries this year, according to a survey released on Thursday that also showed slippage in the percentage of American workers covered by employer health plans. … The percentage of people receiving health-care coverage at work … Continue reading Health Care Crisis? Blame the Lawyers!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}