Letters: Let’s Get Lawyers Out of Health Care

Let's Get Lawyers Out of Health Care
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Was Rep. Eric Cantor the only participant at the recent Public Square who recognized the "big elephant in the room" -- money-draining tort litigation?

Cantor was right on target about tort reform: "It is time for us -- and this is coming as a lawyer -- to get the lawyers out of the business of frivolous litigation and allow for health care costs to stabilize."

A doctor examining a patient has two major thoughts. First, of course, is: "Help the patient." That expensive second thought is: "In view of the many court cases I hear about, with huge malpractice punitive money awards against physicians, I will cover my assets by trying to keep this patient from suing me." So, the doctor orders extra costly tests as judgment reinforcements for his or her diagnosis and treatment, and pays heavily for liability insurance. This thinking may seem insignificant and unimportant, but I think it is profound. It has greatly increased the cost of national public health care insurance to a serious, widespread public concern.

Since, in a tort case, the patient's malpractice-caused altered lifestyle is taken care of by the damage award, I think every penny of punitive award money should go directly to the local, state, or federal government to lower public medical care insurance costs or to help medical research. Also, people who instigate malpractice suits should pay defendant legal fees and court costs if they lose their cases. I am not a lawyer, but I think these two tort law changes would result in fewer frivolous cases, thus lower insurance costs, and would alter doctors' needs for unnecessary, expensive back-up tests.

Ralph Dombrower.
Richmond.

Let's hope that leaders can connect the dots to find long-term solutions with broad benefits beyond enlivening the Bay. Take work being done by the Conservation Management Institute at Virginia Tech. CMI is looking at the impact of warm season grasses planted in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. CMI's Web site on the project states, "Planting native, perennial warm season grasses is a well-established practice for reducing nutrification of waterways, but the economic sacrifice required for traditional buffer plantings has been a significant barrier to the widespread adoption of riparian buffers." As CMI and others point out, if these grasses were a cash crop, then they would be planted in abundance to the great benefit of the Bay, not to mention wildlife habitat, sportsmen, grazing cattle, land conservation, and on and on.

As it is now written, the climate bill in Congress will institute a modest mandatory federal renewable energy standard (RES). Gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds has pledged a statewide RES if elected. These standards would open up a market for warm season grasses as a fuel crop. Farmers would make profits far beyond today's crops while we invest millions in Virginia's economy, create jobs, provide energy security, reduce fossil fuel consumption, and begin to breathe life back into the Bay. Let's just hope that politics and shortsightedness don't win out again.

Curt Gleeson.
Charlottesville.

What happened to personal privacy? There is a big difference between flashing random people in public or other acts of pornography and simply sending a suggestive picture or text message to a known person. Underage children should not be exposing their bodies to anyone; however, it is not the government's place to punish them. It is the parents' job to consider the wrongs done and the consequences that follow.

Additionally, not only underage children are taking part in this new craze; grown men and women also sext. What it comes down to is that the government is overstepping boundaries by taking harmless, personal, private property and issuing unnecessary punishments for such.

Brittany P. McKenney.
Haynesville.

Both my parents attended private and parochial schools -- of which Maryland has many. I attended public schools in western Maryland -- the forgotten end of the state when it came to doling out public favors. There were elected, not appointed, school boards.

Often it is not until later in life that the differences between public and private school exposure become apparent. I was an overachiever and a good student in college; however, I was not prepared to compete in the 1960s with students who had attended private or even public schools under the New York Board of Regents.

I applaud the efforts of those who promote the trend toward private, parochial, home, and charter schools. There is a lot more to education than merely reading, writing, and arithmetic.

There is no question that politically correct curriculums and politically inspired, diversity-driven social-cultural attitudes promoted by the NEA influence agendas in public schools -- more so today than when I was a student.

Those who are sent to private schools or who are home-schooled, sometimes at great sacrifice, are the lucky ones. They are their parents' most valuable resource. As they mature and matriculate, they will come to appreciate the value of the sacrifice made when they were young. Their children's children will be their beneficiaries who, in turn, will inspire future generations of which we all can be proud.

Elizabeth H. White.
Richmond.