And another thing I dislike about America
Jan. 10th, 2005 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
windelinaTurning everything into a for-profit business.
News media is now run for-profit, so it's not about doing the job - it's about making money. Keeping the bottom line nice and low.
So, news corporations don't pay for in-depth investigations. They're too expensive. The Watergate investigation would never happen today - too risky, too expensive.
If we don't need investigations, we don't need investigative reporters. Less people salaried. More of the employees can be inexperienced because they're cheaper.
See how this benefits nobody?
And now they're again talking tort reform wanting to cap medical malpractice awards to keep down insurance premiums. Except that perhaps it's not the awards that are the problem. Insurance rates are rising 33% this year (I may be misquoting, but it's still an egregious amount). Perhaps we should instead institute insurance reform? Insurance has always been a scam, but now it's really about making the money, not doing the job of insuring against problems.
But we don't want to reform business. We don't want to control it, oversee it, or limit it. Business is good for America.
It's just not good for the average American.
One of these days, I'm gonna cross over the line and become some radical socialist. I just know it.
News media is now run for-profit, so it's not about doing the job - it's about making money. Keeping the bottom line nice and low.
So, news corporations don't pay for in-depth investigations. They're too expensive. The Watergate investigation would never happen today - too risky, too expensive.
If we don't need investigations, we don't need investigative reporters. Less people salaried. More of the employees can be inexperienced because they're cheaper.
See how this benefits nobody?
And now they're again talking tort reform wanting to cap medical malpractice awards to keep down insurance premiums. Except that perhaps it's not the awards that are the problem. Insurance rates are rising 33% this year (I may be misquoting, but it's still an egregious amount). Perhaps we should instead institute insurance reform? Insurance has always been a scam, but now it's really about making the money, not doing the job of insuring against problems.
But we don't want to reform business. We don't want to control it, oversee it, or limit it. Business is good for America.
It's just not good for the average American.
One of these days, I'm gonna cross over the line and become some radical socialist. I just know it.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-11 04:34 pm (UTC)Then they passed a law that put insurance review into effect, and the premiums went down and stayed down. Because the insurance company had to open their books to the government and prove that premium hikes were necessary - and they couldn't.
Instead of screwing over the people who have already been screwed over by bad medicine, how about we make sure we're keeping the insurance companies in line? But we won't do that, because the current mindset of America is to coddle the corporation over the needs of the people.
Malpractice claims are a very small percentage of the costs of insurance, but they get the biggest blame when the premiums go up - and the insurance companies put the blame there instead of on their own business practices (unsurprisingly). Adding insult to injury - a majority of malpractice claims are all directed at a handful of doctors. There are doctors that have had multiple malpractice lawsuits and the medical boards won't remove or discipline them.
The whole system is broken.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 02:32 am (UTC)I think you're off base when you suggest that people who were legitimately hurt are going to get screwed under malpractice reform. Nobody has suggested capping those awards - all the attention has gone to punitive damages and "pain & suffering" damages, which imao are out of line unless the doctor can be proved to have done something demonstrably stupid like leaving instruments behind. A lot of malpractice awards come because the doctor guessed wrong about what was affecting the patient, as if people were all the same make & model and reacted the same way to everything. Medicine is not like auto repair - not all diseases and conditions react the same to the same therapy from one patient to the next, and holding doctors to a zero-defects standard is unrealistic.
I'd like to see that link to the story about California insurance, because I find it very hard to believe. Insurance companies are regulated damn near as strictly as banks, and for the same reasons - they're handling other peoples' money, and government tends to keep a close eye on that sort of thing.
No, the whole system isn't broken - but it sure could use some fixing.