Hillary hollow on health care

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: September 18, 2007

Well, there she goes again. Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton is talking about health care, a subject the former first lady has, for the most part, judiciously avoided since an initial foray 13 years ago.

That effort produced more than 1,000 pages of proposed bureaucratic dithering that would have required, among a multitude of things, employers to provide health care through heavily regulated health-maintenance organizations. Even Democratic icon Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose seat Clinton eventually filled, railed against the idea: "Anyone who thinks [it] can work in the real world as presently written isn't living in it."

Clinton's aim now is similar. She wants to require health insurance for all, using federal taxpayer money - $110 billion a year — to help "offset" the cost, an interesting concept that somehow ignores the reality that someone (ultimately, us) still will have to pay for it.

She rightly points out that the United States spends $2 trillion a year, more than any other country, on health care but ranks 31st in life expectancy and 40th in child mortality.

But like many on her side of the ideological fence, including former trial lawyer and perennial Democratic candidate John Edwards, Clinton turns a blind eye to the big problem in health care: medical liability costs. The Bush administration estimates $60 billion annually could be saved through tort reform, including capping pain and suffering awards at $250,000, limiting lawyer fees and allowing judgments to be paid in installments, rather than lump sums.

Liability insurance premiums have soared during this decade in states that lack similar restrictions — doubling in some places, rising by more than a third in others. The effects reverberate throughout the system, pushing doctors into what they call "defensive medicine," ordering treatments not because they're needed but in hopes of avoiding fat, frivolous lawsuits. The result, of course, is higher health-care costs.

When patients and their families treat malpractice like it's the lottery rather than a legitimate means of recouping reasonable sums for hospital or physician error, the rest of us must help pick up the tab as premiums inevitably rise.

Without tort reform, Clinton's assurance that she will in her first term ensure that "every man, woman and child [has] affordable health care in America" is as hollow as her initial proposal was dense. Neither campaign-trail sound bites nor thick pitches for inflated bureaucracies will fix what ails health care.