This makes too much sense

David Freddoso points out a no-brainer, a win-win-win, a common sense approach—whatever you want to call it—to save $54 billion on health care as proposed by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. It's basically a tort reform approach, which means that Obama and most Democrats will automatically be against it since shutting off the money spigot to their big lawyer donors does not represent "change they can believe in". Excerpt:

The list of reforms that CBO considered includes:

• A reform of "joint and several liability." This means that instead of putting one "deep-pocketed" defendant on the hook for everything, each defendant would pay only his fair share according to his liability.


• A $250,000 cap on non-economic damages.


• A cap on punitive damages equal to $500,000 or twice economic damages, whichever is greater.


• A claw-back of money already recovered from insurers.


• A limit on the percentage of judgements and settlements that trial lawyers can pocket.

The CBO report cites studies that already show reduced Medicare costs in states where some or all of these liability reforms have already been implemented. The conclusion:

In the case of the federal budget, enactment of such a package of proposals would reduce mandatory spending for Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits program by roughly $41 billion over the next 10 years.

CBO says that the reforms would also increase tax revenues by $13 billion, as premiums drop and a greater share of employees' income becomes taxable take-home pay. The bottom line for the federal government is $54 billion over ten years, including $11 billion this year.