limits on lawsuits?

[irwincur]

The increased costs of health care are primarily related to malpractice insurance and the increased cost of drugs (whose profit margins are not razor thin, but fatter than Star Jones - look at a Pfizer quarterly earnings report sometime).

Uhh...

Malpractice Insurance rates correspond to the rate of Malpractice Tort suits. Do you think I am stupid. Insurance rates rarely go up on their own, there is a cause and effect relationship...

OK. Pfizer is doing great. That may be why they have canned thousands of workers and have shut down facilities all over the nation. How about the five or six other major drug companies that were around a decade ago, most are half of what they used to be. Costs attributed to lawsuits are directly to blame.


On the average drug it takes six years out of the seven in the no-compete pahse of the release to recoup costs. If a drug company fails to find a hit once per decade they are pretty much done. Surprisingly, the majority of these costs are not R&D related - they are related to insurance, lawsuits, legal consultation, and government regulation.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: zendari
If criminals or whomever have rights the right to own a gun is one of them. Whether they have rights or not is a different issue. Liberal guncontrolfreaks have usurped one of our consitutional rights; its easier for a 12 year old girl to get an immedate abortion-on-demand no questions asked in this country than it is for a law abiding citizen to buy a gun.

Plenty of people misuse other freedoms in this country; doesn't mean that they have been or should be restricted.

If criminals don't have rights how do you propose to control this without ID checking?

Personally I think the problem rests with the underlying assumption that gun ownership is a right. But I don't see how America could really expect to change that, so the best strategy has to take that into account.

 

[zendari]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: zendari
If criminals or whomever have rights the right to own a gun is one of them. Whether they have rights or not is a different issue. Liberal guncontrolfreaks have usurped one of our consitutional rights; its easier for a 12 year old girl to get an immedate abortion-on-demand no questions asked in this country than it is for a law abiding citizen to buy a gun.

Plenty of people misuse other freedoms in this country; doesn't mean that they have been or should be restricted.

If criminals don't have rights how do you propose to control this without ID checking?

Personally I think the problem rests with the underlying assumption that gun ownership is a right. But I don't see how America could really expect to change that, so the best strategy has to take that into account.

I am relieved to see that someone who places so little value in the 2nd amendment doesnt live in our country.

For whatever reason our nations offers criminals plenty of rights such as this Miranda BS.

 

[Helenihi]

Originally posted by: morrisbj

Originally posted by: smack Down
Lawyers sueing over any thing and everything is the corportation faults who in their decided it would be cheaper to settle all lawsuits then to fight any them. And now it comes as a shock that they lawyers will sue over anything.

Newsflash: Lawyers don't sue people. Lawyers represent the person who is suing someone.

Well its supposed to work that way, but as we are seeing with this potential soda suit in Massaschussets, where the lawyers are already planning the lawsuit but haven't yet gotten any clients yet, it doesn't always.

The tobacco lawsuits were also more about the lawyers than their clients, as were many shareholder lawsuits, brought by lawfirms who would buy a single share of stock in thousands of companies and then sue whenever one of them didn't quite make a projected profit level.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: zendari

I am relieved to see that someone who places so little value in the 2nd amendment doesnt live in our country.

For whatever reason our nations offers criminals plenty of rights such as this Miranda BS.

Actually, your "Miranda BS" protects the rights of people acused of being criminals. Surely you aren't now going to claim that no innocent man (or woman) has ever been arrested/jailed/executed.

You can be as relieved as you want about my position on your 2nd amendment, I happen to believe that since the amendment is there, and the political will to change it is not there, it needs to be fully respected.

I think reasonable measures without trampling your constitution might be brief 'cooling off' periods before purchasing a gun, some sort of traceability, so that a gun is linked to an owner, and not much else.

Out of interest, I know ex-cons in Florida can't vote; can they own guns?

 

[TGS]

I think the devil's advocate arguement there is that by placing serial numbers and ID checks places artificial obstacles in place of law abiding citizens intending to purchase firearms. While the criminal, most likely will not obtain a registered weapon(or otherwise) in a "legal" fashion. Will it stop some people from having easier access? Of course. Will it stop all illegal firearm purchases? Of course not. Will the restrictions accomplish more good than harm? Most likely.


edit:

Originally posted by: zendari

I am relieved to see that someone who places so little value in the 2nd amendment doesnt live in our country.

For whatever reason our nations offers criminals plenty of rights such as this Miranda BS.

Also it's quite funny that someone who jumps down on others for decrying people as criminals before a trial, labels those having Miranda read to them as criminals as well.

Edit2: I would also like someone to present numbers to state the case of correlation between the higher number of lawsuits and higher insurance costs. I remember watching CSPAN, and two senators debating this very point. One side tried to imply that the number of lawsuits directly effected the cost of health care. While the other side had hard numbers from the most litigation prone areas, having the lowest cost for health care.

 

[Bitek]

Originally posted by: DonVito

Originally posted by: irwincur
Yes there need to be limits. Lawsuits are the primary reason why many products and services are so expensive. Drugs and medical services come to mind here. It is almost impossible to open a clinic today as a lone doctor. It costs billions to develop a drug and the margins are razer thin - out of control lawsuits increase risk which greatly decreases innovation in the field.

This is totally untrue, and a maddeningly common misconception. The increased costs of health care are primarily related to malpractice insurance and the increased cost of drugs (whose profit margins are not razor thin, but fatter than Star Jones - look at a Pfizer quarterly earnings report sometime). States that have imposed tort reforms limiting malpractice law suits have seen malpractice insurance premiums go down only very slightly (less than 3%).

That's not totally true either. While some blockbuster drugs have a high profit margin, the R&D, submissions and clinicals that are involved are extremely expensive and the majority of drug canidates do not reach market. Just taking a snapshot of the top company over one Q or a yr is misleading and does not provide a clear picture of the economics of the drug industry.

The drug business is highly cyclical, and the overall trend for drug makers has been downward in profitablity. Not to mention new drugs are increasingly difficult to discover so future profits are questionable, as well as the cash reserves these companies need to survive the "dry" years when the blockbusters go off patent and a new one has not been discovered. Look at Schering-Plough and all those layoffs.

Also look at Merck. Questionable lawsuits and insane damage awards ($250M alone for the one proven case) alone have already lead to 7000 layoffs and closure of 5 manufacturing plants. IF these plants reopen, it is highly possible that they will be overseas. Meaning these jobs are lost forever, as well as a loss to the huge number of support, service and part provider companies (many of these small companies whose business depends on these large plants.)

These damage awards are a choice of where we want to dedicate these resources. Moving vast resources to a small number of individuals and away from revenue & job-generating business will lead to an overall negative impact on the economy. Oh well, I guess there is always Walmart, they are always hiring....

 

[TGS]

Nevermind the fact drug companies release drugs with no long term studies about what they are putting to market. It seems the billions of dollars they rake in before the real implications of long term use are brought to bare they should be penalized for putting the burdun on the consumer. The fact they build huge empires around a drug that has tremendous repurcussions for long term usage, it seems fair these drug fiefdom are brought down.

When a company releases a product, without informing the consumer of *all* the side effects they should be held responsible for what the product is doing to their clientele. If the customer insists on using the product after being warned of the what could possibly happen, the burden is on the consumer at that point.

 

[morrisbj]

Originally posted by: TGS
Edit2: I would also like someone to present numbers to state the case of correlation between the higher number of lawsuits and higher insurance costs. I remember watching CSPAN, and two senators debating this very point. One side tried to imply that the number of lawsuits directly effected the cost of health care. While the other side had hard numbers from the most litigation prone areas, having the lowest cost for health care.

Good luck there. The insurance industry wasn't even able to provide those numbers when they tried to pass their tort reform bill here in Washington. They made blanket statements and outright lies, but when put on the spot, they could not provide one scrap of proof. They made a great correllation between malpractice insurance rates and doctors leaving, but they had no evidence they could quote linking lawsuits to insurance costs, because there isn't any. If there was, they would have used it.

 

[Meuge]

Originally posted by: TGS
Nevermind the fact drug companies release drugs with no long term studies about what they are putting to market. It seems the billions of dollars they rake in before the real implications of long term use are brought to bare they should be penalized for putting the burdun on the consumer. The fact they build huge empires around a drug that has tremendous repurcussions for long term usage, it seems fair these drug fiefdom are brought down.

When a company releases a product, without informing the consumer of *all* the side effects they should be held responsible for what the product is doing to their clientele. If the customer insists on using the product after being warned of the what could possibly happen, the burden is on the consumer at that point.

You say that, cause you know nothing about phamaceuticals.

Drug patents are very short-term (as opposed to music rights, for example (!)). A drug company has to file a patent as soon as a candidate drug is discovered, and before beginning safety studies. It takes 5-7 years to get FDA approval, and after that the company may have <5 years before generics can manufacture it, to make their profit. And for every hit drug, there are at least 9 misses, with tens of millions in insurance and R&D costs. So tell me, how do you expect a drug company to make a profit?

Furthermore, how long do you expect companies to keep drugs off the market for long-term studies 10, 20, 30 years? Do you not think that the number of people who'd be helped by the drug in the meantime is higher than the number who'd be hurt by possible unforeseen ultra-long-term side-effects?