Health Care Shouldn’t Be Politics As Usual

After the vote to send the health care bill to the Senate floor, there was a round of Republican tweets that predicted that the vote would end the careers of Senators that voted for the bill. That is the way to many of the misguided Senators see this issue. It’s simply a political game.

They don’t care about the 98,000 people that die each year due to medical errors. These are injuries that are preventable. They don’t want to talk about the medical errors, or medical negligence, and the resulting medical malpractice.

Instead, they call for people to trade away their rights to get quality, affordable care. The CBO and GAO have stated time and time again that tort reform will do practically nothing to lower costs. They also found evidence that tort reform could lead to worse patient care. Less accountability will never mean better health care. Forty-six states have already passed some kind of tort reform, and costs continue to skyrocket. It clearly doesn’t work.

It all comes down to the old Bush/Rove anti lawyer mantra. The goal should be to lower costs and insure more people. But, it requires leaders that really want to fix the problem and not just use it to grandstand.