Fuzzy government math....

The Senate majority leader uses government mysterious accounting methods to argue why Democrats completely ignored tort reform in the government takeover of healthcare.....



All aspects of healtcare cost $2 trillion per year, true, and there is a potential to save a mere $54 billion through tort reform. However, as government numbers work, $54 billion is actually $540 per decade and this compares to the $800 billion or so per decade that the Senate Finance Committee proposal was scored to cost. Seems like a worthwhile pursuit to me.

But the reality is, that the Democrats will never tackle tort reform since trial lawyers are one of the biggest donors to the Democrat party. And remember, that the government takeover of healthcare that was scored to cost $800+ billion will HAVE to be paid for by someone. This will be paid for by you not by the evil rich. We will have so many fewer rich in the near future that all of you liberals should be very proud.

In addition to the direct costs of government intervention we can expect that overall quality will decline and this decline will be dramatic for some. I suspect that there will be less long-term innovation and this will lead to both a decline in the US'es value added leading to less exports and lower future performance of new medicine. Governments tend to freeze innovation at the point of takeover.