Trial Lawyers Fear Loss of Senate

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

Shakespeare (1564-1616),  King Henry VI

The trial bar pays out big to Democrats because it has to.  Nobody likes lawyers, and Americans love legal reform, particularly when the political chips are down.

Kim Strassel, “Trial Lawyers Mobilize for Democrats,”Wall Street Journal,  April 4, 2014

America’s trial lawyers have a problem.  They fear a Republican Senate would introduce serious medical reform into ObamaCare.

The trial lawyers  know this.  To placate critics, last year  they changed their name from the Association of Trial Lawyers of America to American Association of Justice.  They do not want to labelled as one of the largest single contributors to the Democratic Party and as the principal reasons ObamaCare has so little tort reform elements.  

Tort lawyers  know if they lose the Senate they may  lose their ObamaCare clout and their immunity from serious scrutiny.   Until now, ObamaCare has not seriously considered addressing tort reform.  Instead the bill contains token demonstration projects.  

If the Senate were to be lost, tort reform might ensue.    

A bill  introduced by Senators Burr(R-NC), Hatch (R-Utah) and Coburn(R- Oklahoma),  has  tort reform elements might pass.   Other proposed Republican bills contain language that says if doctors follow certain guidelines they would be protected against frivolous lawsuits by special tort courts.

Since ObamaCare’s inception,  tort reform and defensive medicine have been neglected or purposefully omitted tort reform, even  though costs of malpractice and defensive medicine  practices are estimated to cost US health care as much as $200 billion a year.   

Representative Tom  Price, MD,  Congressman from Georgia, was told before ObamaCare passage not even to touch the tort issue because Obama and the Democratic party were in the pocket of trial lawyers,  one of the biggest single contributors to the Democratic Party.   

In 2009, Howard Dean,  MD,  then a leader in  Democratic fund raising and a former Presidential candidate, said,  

“The reason that tort reform is not in the bill is that the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers…and that’s the truth plain and simple.”

Tweet: If Republicans win the Senate in November, Obamacare tort reform will likely ensue.