News from the Plains: All this RED can make you BLUE
A special legislative session ... for THIS?
by Barry Friedman
-Oklahoma has the fourth-lowest per-pupil spending in the country.
-Oklahoma is the sixth-worst state for obesity rates, with nearly one in three residents qualifying as obese.
-Oklahoma has improved its teen birth rate in the past five years but still moved up to the fourth highest in the U.S.
-Oklahoma has the highest rate of female incarceration in the country.
-Oklahoma ranks 7th in the nation for percent of uninsured children.
-Oklahoma is 43rd this year in Overall Health Ranking.
So, by all means, let's call a special session of the state legislature to address ... tort reform.
"As lawmakers," said Governor Fallin, "we need to act now to protect our businesses and our medical community from frivolous lawsuits and skyrocketing legal costs.”
Actually, they don't, certainly not in a special session that will cost taxpayers
$30-thousand per day. And they also don't, because, well, they don't.
''It may be hard to understand why 'tort reform' is even on the national agenda at a time when insurance industry profits are booming, tort filings are declining, only 2 percent of injured people sue for compensation, punitive damages are rarely awarded, liability insurance costs for businesses are minuscule, medical malpractice insurance and claims are both less than 1 percent of all health care costs in America, and premium-gouging underwriting practices of the insurance industry have been widely exposed.''
The governor insisted, though, after the State Supreme Court determined that a tort reform bill passed in 2009 was
unconstitutional--in fact, Oklahoma courts have been saying that about most things the legislature
is doing--something needed to be done about frivolous lawsuits.
One man's ceiling is another man's floor and one governor's frivolous lawsuit is another woman's dead child.
More about that in a moment.
A cynic might say this special session is all about the clout of the state's insurance lobby.
Call me a cynic.
The contributions from the health industry accounted for one out of every seven dollars given to Fallin’s campaigns for governor, a World analysis of Ethics Commission data reflects. The individuals, businesses and political action committees from the health sector have contributed about $741,000 to Fallin’s 2010 and 2014 candidate committees.
Further, the second-most active campaign for 2014 is for the race of Insurance Commissioner. The incumbent John Doak already $221,000 in the
kitty.
He transferred $65,564 from his campaign fund for 2010 when he unseated Commissioner Kim Holland, the Democratic incumbent. Doak, a Republican from Edmond, spent more than $800,000 in that race. The insurance commissioner job pays $114,713 a year.
The governor is adamant.
“Those laws are now under attack. In the weeks since the court ruled our laws unconstitutional, at least a dozen lawsuits have been reopened against hospitals, doctors and other employers.”
Oh, no, not lawsuits against businesses, bad doctors ... against job creators!
Now ... the dead child.
Lance Mixon died in 2008 after being prescribed a lethal mix of painkillers and other medications by his doctor, later prosecuted by the state and stripped of his license.
Good on the state, yes?
Not so fast.
When Ziva Branstetter of the Tulsa World asked the governor's office to send her the cases that have been re-filed since the ruling, those that exemplify the problem, guess what was on the list?
Bingo.
Gov. Mary Fallin's office has listed a lawsuit by Mixon's mother when discussing the need to protect doctors from "frivolous lawsuits."
So does this mean the state, which had prosecuted this case four years ago, now considers it frivolous?
The mother thinks so.
Vicky Moore said she can’t understand why the governor’s office would include a lawsuit over her son’s death on its list of cases Fallin cited as a reason for the special session.
“I want justice to be done,” Moore said, wiping her eyes. “What about the people that trust the doctors and go in there for real reasons and end up .?.?.” she said, her voice trailing off.
Asked why the governor would include the Mixon case, her spokesman, Alex Weintz, told Branstetter, “I’m not sure the governor has seen all of those cases."
Oh, so to prove the courts are being inundated with frivolous lawsuits, you send over a list of cases which may not be frivolous.
Yossarian, line one!
Here's what the fuss is all about, here's what the state just can't live without.
Among a host of claim-specific limitations, the Act required plaintiffs to obtain an affidavit of merit for professional negligence suits, enacted stricter discovery disclosure rules for plaintiffs than defendants and required that a suit be dismissed if defendants were not served within 180 days.
It also set a limit on awards for non-economic damages at $400,000, which was subsequently lowered to $350,000.
And that is why the state will spend approximately a quarter of a million dollars in September-- to repackage that bill so it will pass constitutional muster and return order to the judicial chaos that is now Oklahoma. More disturbing, the final legislation might be even worse, for when it was originally passed, Oklahoma had a Democratic
governor and many more Democratic legislators who demanded concessions. Now, there aren't enough Democrats in state government to fill an airport courtesy van.
This, too: every vote against lawyers is a vote for insurance adjustors.
Shakespeare was wrong about whom to kill first.