LETTERS
Hello
Just wanted you to know how much I enjoyed your “Urgent Business Proposal” from “Joe Gray Davis” in the March 17 Comment.
Jim Riordan
Publisher
Seven Locks Press
Santa Ana
Your March 17 e-mail spoof of Gray Davis was too good. Well done. I am not sure all your readers will get the not-so-subtle humor, but a great work of words and wit.
Adam D. Probolsky
President
Probolsky Research
Costa Mesa
Editor’s note: Thanks. We think Adam Zakharov’s design was great work, too.
The Register, Smith
I don’t think it was fair in your March 10 story on Freedom Communications to say that its Orange County Register has an “anti-government vision.”
I think the paper’s editorial page should be noted for its stance in calling for responsive, responsible government. We are supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Yet I see, with great consistency, a “top-down” coercive government that systematically advocates the erosion of the basic liberties that were once “self-evident.” To throw about the term “anti-government” is, to some, equating the paper with the isolationist paramilitary “militias” that roam the southern states.
Regarding your March 10 Comment, I hear Supervisor Smith’s great grandfather was famous for having called forth a committee to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, thus saving a great many people from drowning in them.
R.J. Mallory
Anaheim
Deep Thoughts on Med Reform, Taxes
In our increasingly litigious society, doctors are so afraid of crippling lawsuits that they work behind the thin armor of millions of dollars worth of malpractice insurance. Lawsuits for bad results or unpleasant complications of good medical treatment, rather than true malpractice, account for most of the spending on medical liability.
This system should be radically changed.
One way to lower the cost of medical care is to permit patients to buy individual “unhappy results” policies, similar to flight or fire or auto insurance. Author Paul H. Rubin calls this “tort reform by contract.” It would make for fewer predatory and frivolous lawsuits.
Some states forbid awards designed to hurt the doctor, not compensate the victim. The Nebraska state constitution requires “punitive damages” to go to the state education system, not to the plaintiffs or their lawyers. Art Jetter, a life and health insurance broker in Omaha, Neb., notes that Nebraska’s “medical insurance premiums are among the lowest in the nation” and that Nebraska has “among the lowest medical liability premiums in the country.”
Finally, we suggest that real malpractice cases, which are inevitably highly technical and complex, should be handled by a specialized court system, not slugged out in courts of general jurisdiction. For this notion we’re indebted both to common sense and to a 1997 book, “Justice Matters,” by Roberta Katz with Philip Gold.
Obviously, these reforms won’t come about overnight. But we do need to think and dream outside the jury box.
On another topic
As President Bush’s proposed growth and stimulus package is debated, much is being said about how it “unfairly favors the rich,” yet seldom are “the rich” defined in terms of income.
Since the vast majority of Americans do not perceive themselves to be rich, they generally assume “rich” means someone who earns more than they do, and therefore accept that it is “unfair” that the “rich” benefit more than they do. Similarly, the criteria to assess “fairness” is never addressed. What is perceived as fair by those who benefit from increasing taxes may not be perceived as fair by those who pay the bulk of taxes.
To ensure that future tax-rate reductions do not “unfairly” favor the “rich,” the U.S. should adopt the same rate for all taxpayers on all taxable income.
This flat tax would have numerous other benefits. For one thing, the tax code would be simplified so everyone could understand it. Also, there would be no need to debate who was and who was not “rich.” Therefore Americans could quit fighting class warfare and get on with being more productive.
Michael Arnold Glueck
Robert J. Cihak
Thomas R. Damiani
(Glueck, MD, of Newport Beach, writes locally and nationally on medical-legal issues. Cihak, MD, of Kirkland, Wash., is a former president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons Damiani is a business consultant in Newport Beach.)
El Toro, Cont’d
It has always been a mystery to me, why Irvine, the city that stands to gain the most from an airport at El Toro, has claimed to be against the airport.
The airplanes do not even pass over Irvine, and no one, anywhere, is in the noise zone of that airport, unlike John Wayne Airport, which has victims, and should be closed. As an airport, the Navy will get top dollar for the property, and private enterprise will build colleges, terminals, and hotels.
Irvine should not be allowed to annex that base unless it comes up with an ironclad restriction against an airport that even Irvine cannot rescind, in order to prevent double-crossing its friends. I favor the planned El Toro International Airport, but I believe it should be controlled by the county and not by the city of Irvine.
Donald Nyre
Newport Beach
