Letters to the Editor: Use Actual Data to Verify Results

Use Actual Data To Verify Results
Editor, Times-Dispatch: The editorial, "Tort Retort," depends for its validity on a Congressional Budget Office estimate that $54 billion would be saved by restricting legal responsibility for medical error through tort reform.

One factor is an assumed monetary savings by "lowering insurance premiums" although no explanation is given of how insurance companies would be persuaded to lower premiums -- unless malpractice insurance was rendered unnecessary by completely eliminating legal responsibility.

Neither do we have any idea whether savings to physicians would be reflected in lower medical costs or health insurance costs. Unless a complete repeal of civil litigation is intended, a much more accurate and readily available measure exists. Many state laws provide for restrictions on malpractice recovery. I have read that Virginia's laws are the strongest. It would be easy to compare medical costs here and in the other reformed states against those states that have lesser degrees of restriction or none at all.

A similar measure can be applied to nonessential procedures and tests. This too would depend on complete absence of legal responsibility. I have been nagged, and even browbeaten by medical personnel to subject myself to innately dangerous medical testing despite an absence of necessity for the procedures. Again, however, empirical evidence could show us whether this happens more frequently in states without tort reform.

I am not impressed by the abstracts of the CBO. Let's see some actual records of actual practices and results.

Patsy Anne Bickerstaff.
Richmond.

It's hard enough to have a Double A baseball team survive in this town. Do they really believe fans will take the Flying Squirrels seriously?

Don Park.
Sandy Hook.

She claims that offshore drilling will take 30 years to be effective. Hogwash. We can't predict out 30 years. If permitted, oil will flow within three or four years and will create 160,000 high-paying jobs within 20 years, and raise $1.7 trillion in revenue (American Petroleum Institute).

Pratt talks of polluting spills, but the U.S. has a 99.999 percent safety record on offshore drilling, according to the U.S. Energy Administration -- despite our oil wells being located in hurricane territory. More oil bubbles up from natural seepage than from drilling. In fact, drilling would reduce the seepage as it would relieve the pressure on the oil and gas structures.

She claims that only six days of oil are available off the coast of Virginia and then goes on to say that the facilities needed to handle all of this would burden the coastal communities. These facilities would furnish their own protection, safety, and operating resources -- and pay a lot of taxes.

Pratt is for renewables, yet simple arithmetic will show that there is no future in wind and solar -- despite massive government subsidies. It would take 50 square miles of collectors, or 1,000 windmills, to equal our North Anna nuclear facility.

She claims that fishing would be adversely affected, but the oil rigs are where the fishermen go to fish. And so it goes.

The horizon is three miles from shore and the oil rigs will be many more miles out -- completely out of sight (acknowledgments to National Review).

Corbin Dixon.
Staunton.

It starts with a federal excise tax of at least 10 percent paid when a new truck is purchased. For any truck having a taxable gross weight of 55,000 pounds or more, there is a Heavy Vehicle Tax paid to the U.S. Treasury -- which is in addition to the registration fees paid to the Department of Motor Vehicles. These fees range from $1,000 to $1,300 registration per truck. Both the Heavy Vehicle Tax and the registration are paid annually.

For any trucks that haul interstate, there is the International Fuel Tax Agreement, quarterly tax return, charging 3.5 percent per gallon on fuel used in Virginia. There are different rates for other states. Remember, trucks have already paid a state tax of .1750 and a federal tax of .2440 when the fuel was purchased.

Therefore, although the annual amounts of $10 per truck for IFTA decals and $806 for 21 to 100 trucks seem small, it is yet another tax or registration fee on the so-called under-taxed truckers. And don't forget -- we pay personal property taxes just like everyone else. J.R. Tharpe, J.R. Tharpe Trucking, Inc.


Burkeville.