Well, now, isn’t that special…
Forbes reports on a new investment vehicle, tailor-made for the get-rich-quick crowd:
Playing The Odds: Hedge Funds Finance Medical Malpractice Claims:
An entirely new industry has cropped up in recent years as trial lawyers set their sights on making money off physicians, corporations and other targets–particularly financing malpractice suits through hedge funds. In 2010, hedge funds invested $1 billion in these types of suits, much of it for medical malpractice cases…
… the rewards can be remarkable for investors, which is why dollars are flowing into these hedge funds. Payouts can result in tens of millions of dollars.
George Soros, call your office…
Having milked all the money they can from sub-prime mortgages, derivatives, credit default swaps, and political largess from wholly-owned and operated politicians, and after causing a depression or two, our financial wizards now turn their attention to where the real money is: suing doctors. Gotta love it. Ya think, maybe, just maybe, our tort system is a little out of control?
In days gone past — when there was hope about changing such things — I would have launched into a diatribe about the need for reigning in the lawyers, tort reform, etc. etc. Perhaps age, experience, and a touch of wisdom have led me to see the futility of such righteous indignation. Simply put: the system is never going to change. Sadly, we are locked in: the consequences of our current tort system is carved in stone, and they will be both inevitable — and ugly.
The system will never change because the system is the problem: most politicians are lawyers, and lawyers pour ungodly amount of money into the politicians’ pockets — the Democratic Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trial Lawyers Association (90 percent of its $30.7 million in contributions since 1989 went to Democrats). The AMA — purportedly representing physicians — is now a political, socialist animal, having embraced the dark side themselves, making hundreds of millions selling the diagnosis and procedure codes to physicians required to be (under)paid by the Feds and big insurance.
Tort reform? Fuggeddaboutit. When it has been passed at the state level, it has been gutted by the courts (need I mention that judges are lawyers, too?). And tort reform will do nothing to change the enormous cost increases brought about by defensive medicine — at best it may moderate malpractice insurance premiums, when it survives the courts, which it rarely does.
So what’s the inevitable consequence of this disastrous medicolegal monster? Access, my friend, access — as in: none:
Frivolous lawsuits are helping drive physicians out of the profession and pushing up the cost of health care. A Gallup-Jackson health care survey released last year found that $1 in every $4 spent in health care is for unnecessary tests and procedures that doctors order to prevent from being sued.
As 32 million new patients acquire health insurance under ObamaCare and the number of Medicare recipients doubles over the next decade, the physician shortage will be worse than ever. Hedge funds that target doctors will not only make health care more expensive, but they will make a doctor very hard to find.
The parasite has grown fat and happy sucking blood from its host — but at some point the host weakens and dies. Best pick his pocket now, while the gettin’ is good. His days are numbered.
Stay healthy, folks — the doctor will likely not be around when you need him. Maybe you can call your lawyer instead — or your friendly hedge fund manager.
