107 1/2 Washington Street

I missed John Edwards' speech last night. But the Deacon at Power Line didn't. Great stuff. I still find myself wondering why the Democrats are daring to discuss the rising costs of health care given John Edwards' contribution to such things. John Stossel has an interesting piece on VP Candidate Edwards, trial lawyers, and their effect on the country.

Trial lawyers comprise one of the most powerful professions in America, yet we rarely hear about the unintended consequences of what they do, and how the lawsuits they pursue impact our lives. . . .

John Edwards has said he loved being a trial lawyer because he was able to help the little guy, but lawyers hurt the little guys, too. Every product you buy has a built-in cost to cover what lawyers make through lawsuits. . . .

But paying higher prices is not the biggest effect of what the lawyers do. What may be worse is what the fear of lawsuits do to medical care and innovation.

In hospitals, the lawyers have bred so much fear that patients now suffer more pain, and may be less safe because doctors are concerned about being sued.

"That fear is always there," said obstetrics professor Dr. Edgar Mandeville. "Everybody walks in mortal fear of being sued."

The Department of Health and Human Services found doctors order painful tests they consider unnecessary, for fear of being sued. And the majority of doctors say they recommended invasive procedures more often than they believed were medically necessary in an effort to prevent potential litigation. . . .

Clearly, there are bad and careless doctors, but in certain specialties most doctors are being sued.

In fact, 76 percent of American obstetricians have been sued. Yet lawyers . . . often say there are only a 'few' physicians who are causing all the problems.

Then how is it fair that three-fourths of the obstetricians get sued?

Consumers pay for that insurance in increased costs, but the result doesn't necessarily make us safer. A government study found this fear of lawsuits has made many hospitals reluctant to report problems, with as many as 95 percent of adverse events believed to go unreported.

Are the fear and the secrecy making us less safe?

Stossel also includes this interesting statistic.

Lawyers were the biggest contributors to [Edwards'] presidential campaign, and now they've become the biggest givers to the Democratic Party — bigger than labor unions, corporations — bigger than anybody.

UPDATE: I also missed Teresa Heinz-Kerry's speech on Tuesday. But Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker didn't. It's a skewed analysis, but gives us a bit of insight into Teresa's family history, if nothing else.

She is clearly a woman who enjoys telling others her opinion. She makes her pronouncements with a slightly grand air, as if giving a gift to lesser mortals. She went on to mainly talk about herself, her father, her marches against apartheid while a student in South Africa, and her right to speak her mind and be “opinionated” (hands making quotation marks in the air). It all seemed rather defensive, as if she needed to prove herself virtuous, and entitled to have a major voice in matters of public concern. Maybe growing up in a racist Portuguese colony as a member of the tiny white colonial elite has left her with a bit of guilt. Incidentally, she only referred to the land of her birth as a “dictatorship,” glossing over her family’s participation in a harsh colonial system oppressing black Africans. Because her father only was able to vote once, at the age of 73, she even posed as a family of victims of "dictatorship."

I was going to take points off for not recognizing Teresa's reference to Lincoln's inaugural address ("mystic chords of . . . memory") but I see he's corrected himself now.