Ads unfairly twist the scalpel

Employing demagoguery out of desperation, Rep. George Nethercutt’s new TV ad on medical liability reform barrels across the line of acceptable political discourse. In the spot, several Washington doctors attack Sen. Patty Murray as an opponent of reform. Dr. Shannon Casidy, a Covington OB/GYN, charges, “She’s going to cost patients – potentially even cost them their lives.” It’s breathtaking that Nethercutt’s campaign would associate itself with a statement that manages to be both lower than low and incredibly over the top at the same time.

However, the current intense focus on health care in the U.S. Senate and governor’s races is welcome. It’s an issue as critical as an ICU patient and as serious as the heart attack that put him there.

Voters picking candidates based on their health-care platforms face difficult choices. Nethercutt supports strict caps on medical liability damages, as well as medical savings accounts and the Medicare prescription benefit. Murray favors more modest medical tort reform, a more ambitious Medicare benefit, and the importation of low-cost prescription drugs from Canada. Both candidates say they support creating buying pools so individuals and small businesses can secure group discounts on health coverage.

With the medical system in crisis, liability reform has to be on the operating table. But whenever politicians demonize the idea of suing doctors, I recall what happened when Bush used the term “litigation lottery” last year in referring to a $4.2 million judgment secured by Sen. John Edwards in his days as a trial lawyer. In response, as the Philadelphia Daily News recalled recently, Edwards held a press conference. He stood beside a father awarded money after his child died as a result of medical malpractice. Was he really a lottery winner? “Every time I go to my daughter’s grave, it’s hard to feel that way,” the dad said.

So if we’re going to have liability reform, shouldn’t candidates also call on the medical establishment to stop incompetent doctors from practicing, instead of protecting them as it so often happens?

And what about short-sighted malpractice insurers who settle bogus claims to avoid trials, thereby emboldening scam artists and ambulance chasers? Shouldn’t they be held accountable?

How about big drug makers who jack up prescription prices for U.S. consumers, in part to pay the R&D costs for yet another batch of erection pills?

People of good will could come together and honestly answer those questions. They could push through reasonable system-wide reforms that still give consumers meaningful legal recourse against real malpractice. But accusing one’s political opponents of costing patients their lives isn’t going to get us any closer to curing our health-care ills.

Bush-Kerry ad game

The Bush campaign bought TV time in Washington last week, one of only 17 states where the ad was aired. The Kerry campaign ran television ads in 11 states, but Washington wasn’t one of them. The Bush camp likely is trying to bait Kerry into spending cash here, and maybe score rhetorical points with the national press by challenging Democrats on their turf.

But Kerry should stay dark in the Northwest. After all, if the Massachusetts senator has to fight hard in Washington at this point, he’s looking at a landslide defeat anyway. Luckily for Kerry, that scenario is looking less likely. New state-by-state polls show the electoral race tightening considerably in such Bush strongholds as Arkansas and Colorado – where Kerry added some spots just this week, the L.A. Times noted. Those are the places where Kerry should further expand his TV expenditures.