Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com
3/2/2010
After making the miscalculation of giving Republican ideas on health-care reform national media coverage, Barack Obama has informed Congressional leaders that his new ObamaCare proposal will contain some of the GOP policy demands made during last week’s summit. Which ideas will Obama include? Surprisingly, tort reform is among them … in a way…
In a letter to the Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress delivered to Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon, President Obama signaled that his mind is open to several provisions raised by GOP lawmakers during last week’s bipartisan health care reform summit, including medical malpractice reform, combating fraud, and killing off the special deal for Florida seniors secured by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida.
“No matter how we move forward,” the president wrote, “there are at least four policy priorities identified by Republican Members at the meeting that I am exploring.”…
…Obama has only agreed to spend money on research rather than taking concrete action on tort reform. This includes no commitment to do anything after the demonstration projects conclude. It ignores the CBO analysis of existing tort-reform proposals that would save $54 billion from the federal deficit over the next ten years, and $11o billion for the industry as a whole in the same period. It also ignores the fact that California has had precisely this kind of tort reform in place for years, and has seen the same kind of savings (which the CBO used as part of its analysis)…
The entire article is at HotAir.com
