How Powerful are Lawyers and Abortion Lobbies?

We all know that Obama would likely be able to sway at least some Republicans to vote for Obamacare if he would do one of two things. Obviously, excluding abortion from federal funding would go a long way to passing his dream legislation. But the other way to some level of bipartisan support is real tort reform that includes capping pain and suffering jury awards so doctors aren’t driven out of business by trial lawyers.

Here’s the thing though. Obama and the Democrats aren’t doing either. Why? Because trial lawyers and the abortion industry are two of the biggest funders of the Democratic Party. No Democrat is willing to risk the ire of either of these powerful lobbies.

Obama is so aware of how unpopular federal abortion funding is that he lies about it in every speech he gives. (HT Joe Wilson) But the Democrats are completely unwilling to cave on this issue.

And as far as tort reform goes, the Obama administration can’t argue that they don’t understand the damage done by frivolous lawsuits against doctors because they clearly do. Case in point: A bad guy was in federal custody and he got sick and the government medical officials failed to diagnose his cancer and he died a very young man. Terrible, right? So some people are suing the doctors that work for the government for not helping the young man.

Now here comes the irony. The Obama administration is fighting it says WTOP:

The Obama administration argues that making government medical officials personally liable for damages would make it harder to recruit people to work for the Health and Human Services Department’s Public Health Service and other government medical jobs.

“The court of appeals’ decision will likely have an adverse impact on the government’s ability to recruit, hire and retain medical personnel for the PHS, and may affect other federal entities that have medical missions covered by similar immunity statutes.” Solicitor General Elena Kagan said in court papers.

Ya think?

So, allowing doctors to be sued for all sorts of crazy sums could have a negative impact on the doctors and eventually even impact our quality of health care?

Doesn’t this sound like an argument for tort reform?

But no. Obama only argues this for government doctors. The ones in the private sector must prepare to simply become slaves of the government while still having all the risk and liability on their own. Nice.

So Obama knows that tort reform would help health care quality and keep it more affordable but he won’t do it.

He says he doesn’t know when life begins but he’s willing to have the government pay for abortions.

So even though it’s rumored that Obama feels that the success of his presidency is wrapped up in his healthcare legislation, it’s still not more important to him than keeping the abortion and trial lawyers lobby happy. That is a scary thought that should give any pro-lifer or tort reform advocate cause to shudder.