Corp Reform - Not Tort Reform

Insurance Profitability - Up Tenfold From 2002

When I read statistics like these at Business Week, I begin to wonder if the real reason that doctors can't afford malpractice insurance might be that the Insurance cartels are gouging doctors out of sheer greed:

"U.S. property/casualty insurers’ profits surged to $29.88 billion in 2003, which is an almost tenfold increase over the $3.05 billion the insurers collectively reported in 2002, according to the Insurance Services Office Inc. and the Property Casualty Insurers Assn. of America."

In spite of a tenfold increase in profit, the insurance industry is still crusading for tort reform to protect those poor doctors. Seems to me like those poor doctors need to be protected from the insurance industry. After all, insurance profits skyrocket in the same way that malpractice premiums have. Of course, there can't be any connection between the two, can there?

Pharmaceuticals and Job Outsourcing

One of the most common arguments in support of job outsourcing is that companies can't afford to pay American wages and still sell products that can be priced competitively.

The unspoken premise is that it's OK for consumers to buy goods strictly on the basis of price. So why isn't it OK for consumers to buy prescription drugs from foreign countries at lower prices? Shouldn't consumers be able to outsource their purchasing to the same nations that corporations outsource their manufacturing?

Corporate America, or at least the pharmaceutical industry, doesn't think so. They argue that consumers are "safer" buying their prescription drugs from American distributors. Personally, I stop listening when any governmental or corporate entity tells me that whatever it's doing is for my safety. There's no reason that pharmaceuticals couldn't standardize on one global price, other than greed.

Truly, if we're to have a global economy, consumers should be just as free to buy from those who sell the products for the least amount of money as corporations are to have the products built by those who work for the least amount of money.

Taking it one step further, why not repeal all import taxes and tarriffs and let consumers - both individual and corporate - buy from whoever will sell the products at the lowest price? The answer is that to do so would hurt corporate America, and put people out of work. I think the difference here is that it would put white collar workers on the street, as opposed to job outsourcing which just puts blue collar workers on the street.

The Standard of Care Was Breached

I read this article at Yahoo about a woman who had a 6.7 inch pair of scissors left in her abdomen after surgery, and it provided yet another concrete example of how flawed the current system is for bringing a medical malpractice suit.

If this had happened in Texas, this woman would have had to have hired a physician as an expert witness, and that physician's report would have had to establish the following in order for her to recover any money:

1: That the acceptable standard of care in her operation does not allow scissors to be left in a patient.

2: That by leaving scissors in the woman, her doctor breached the standard of care.

3: That the breach of the standard of care is the proximate cause of her injuries.

Every year, legislatures pass laws that make it harder and harder to bring successful malpractice suits. While those laws help weed out suits without merit, they also raise the costs necessary to sue a doctor who leaves scissors in your stomach.

This incident was in Australia, and I don't know what the med mal laws are there. I would say that the severity of the laws there is in inverse proportion to how much money the insurance industry contributes to Australian politicians. Read the article if for no other reason than to see the X-ray and wonder just how any doctor missed this.

Freecreditreport.com Has Received My Lawsuit

Consumerinfo.com (the Experian subsidiary that owns and operates Freecreditreport.com) has received my lawsuit, and I've discussed the case preliminarily with them.

Their records show that I visited their site in 09/03 and that my card was charged 10/03. This is incorrect - I visited their site and my card was charged on the same day - 11/03/03.

I'm waiting to hear back from them after they reinvestigate the dates of the credit card charge. I'm confident that they'll resolve this amicably with me, as their attorney made it quite clear they don't want to litigate this.

Has anyone else gone to these lengths against Consumerinfo? The attorney claimed I'm the first...

Maurice Greenberg - Much Hullaballoo About Nothing?

Looking at this link at Forbes, it's revealed that Maurice Greenberg, the CEO of AIG insurance, has raked in around $140 million dollars in the past five years.

This, despite his letter grade of "C" compared to the performance of other CEO's. OK, so Maurice makes a lot of money and isn't necessarily the best CEO - no problem.

But what is a problem is the fact that he's contradicted himself in a big way.

For those of you who don't know, Greenberg recently called plaintiff's lawyers "terrorists," and likened the need for tort reform to the war on terror. Maurice blames trial lawyers for the raise in insurance premiums across the country.

However, this completely contradicts his former position. In the mid eighties, when the insurance industry was in a similar crisis, most insurance companies blamed trial lawyers, and pushed for tort reform. A notable exception to this was Maurice, who was the CEO of AIG even then.

In the March 31st, 1986 edition of Business Week, Greenberg said that the real problem was that insurance premium cuts in the early eighties were to blame, and if it weren't for these cuts, there wouldn't be "all this hullabaloo" about needing to reform the tort system. I guess Maurice took a lot of ribbing from his fellow insurance execs in the eighties for blaming the insurance industry instead of the plaintiff's bar.

What bothers me even more is that he accuses lawyers of being similar to terrorists, and then has the audacity to say this:

"When you destroy something you have to rebuild it, and when you rebuild it, you have to insure it. After the (first Gulf) war we benefited from a lot of reconstruction activities, and my guess is we will this time".

So, it's OK for AIG to "benefit" from a war on terrorism, but it's not OK for lawyers to bring suits against the big corporations AIG insures?

I thought jobs were UP?

According to MSNBC, Bank of America is going to lay off 12,500 people over the next two years in order to save $1.6 billion.

Here's a scary quote:

"Bank of America has about $938 billion of assets, 5,700 banking offices in 29 states and Washington, D.C., and about 36 million customers."

$938 billion in assets? And they're only the 3rd largest bank!

To me, the real question is when is the financial sector going to start feeling the pain of outsourcing? The prevailing wisdom is that financial analysts and accountants can crunch numbers just as well in India as they can here, except cheaper. Oh, and with the time difference, they'll always have their work done and on the boss' desk by 9 am!

A Funny Quote About Bush

I don't want my site to become centered on Bush bashing or Republican trashing, but the following quote from this MSNBC article really made me laugh:

"...Bush himself enjoys a complex relationship with the English language and is a far from perfect public speaker."

Thought you'd enjoy it.