TORT, PORT & SAVE
For some months during the recent and ongoing battle over the Democrats’ attempt to impose (on an unwilling America public) leftist nostrums under the guise of “Heath Care” reform [ oops – repackaged as “Health Insurance” reform but, in-fact socialized medicine] one thing has been missing from the debate – a clear and identifiable alternative. Granted the Obama White House has done its level best to obfuscate, blur and flat out lie about what it intends, but conservatives have a distinct advantage; we can tell the truth about what we would like, and a distinct disadvantage; our ideas are, like the panoply of realities suggested by the catchall phrase “Health Care” - our ideas are complicated and difficult to explain to a public “educated” by government schools and the MSM. What conservatives and Republicans could really use (in my non-humble opinion) is a short, crisp, memorable catch-phrase which sums up the anti-socialist position for improving or reforming the delivery of medical care in the United States…and here it is; TORT, PORT & SAVE. By which I mean:
1) Tort reform: limiting the rights-of-action of the class action bar, limiting medical mal practice awards and penalizing the practice and pattern of threatening and filling law suits for fun and (mostly) profit.
2) Portability: removing the myriad government restrictions on how individuals purchase health insurance (across state lines and by groups, etc..) including removing state mandates.
3) Save: Medical Savings Accounts which work wonders by transforming consumers from behaving like collage kids with daddy’s credit card, to working people who realize that the money they spend on medical care (or save) is their own.
These three planks do not represent all of the useful or important ideas regarding the reform of the market for medical care, but they do represent three enormous positive steps which will empower individuals, reduce costs and insulate our country form a socialist power grab. Far more can, and should, be said about each of these three planks of a “Health Care” reform package but, for hear & now, the utility is to define the debate as not just anti-socialized- medicine but in favor of TORT, PORT & SAVE. America, I give a rallying cry, a stance, a thing to be for, a rolled-up newspaper to shove in the mouth of MSM attack dogs, a baseball bat to take to Nancy, Harry & BO, an affirmative alternative to death panels and mandated government control of medical care. TORT, PORT & SAVE – pass it on!
