Since When?

Apparently the big four networks have all refused to run an ad from USAction speaking against the president's proposed legal reform which would place caps on medical malpractice lawsuits, pain and suffering damages, etc.

An advocacy group, USAction, said on Monday that four television networks had turned down its request to run an advertisement opposing President Bush's effort to clamp down on medical malpractice lawsuits.

The group wanted to run the spots just before Mr. Bush's State of the Union address on Wednesday. But networks said the advertisement violated their standards for advertising on controversial issues.

The NBC Universal Television Network, owned by General Electric, told the group, "We are sorry that we cannot accept your ad based on our network policy regarding controversial issue advertising."

As a general rule, the policy says, "time will not be sold on NBC Network facilities for the presentation of views on controversial issues." The policy does not apply to candidates for public office in election years.

ABC, CBS and the Fox Broadcasting Company said they had also turned down the advertisement.

This is a tough situation for me to make the call. (CNN is going to run the ad, by the way.) If anyone can point me to the specifics of Bush's plan, I'd be most grateful. And by "specifics" I mean hard numbers and the exact types of cases where the limits would be applied, and what provisions, if any, would be in place for making exceptions in extraordinary circumstances.

Without that type of information, I'm not sure if I will oppose or support this initiative. I am in favor of some reform in our litigious, "victim mentality" society. There are certainly plenty of cases of frivolous (and sometimes just out and out stupid) lawsuits. As I've mentioned previously at Running Scared, I don't think people should be allowed to sue gun manufacturers for the death of their loved ones if the gun was built in a normal, safe, functional fashion conforming to current safety regulations. The infamous McDonald's "hot coffee lady" also comes to mind. Then again, we still have to be able to hold dangerously incompetent and/or negligent manufacturers accountable and compensate real victims accordingly.

Medical malpractice is even more of a murky area. There was an excellent article last summer (which I really wish I could find right now) about two cases of women who were in a coma. One of them was a woman who went into the hospital for some scheduled, routine surgery. It turned out that she had a previously unknown and undiagnosed neural condition which caused her to experience a precipitous drop in blood pressure during the surgery leading to a coma. (She later awoke and recovered.) Every analysis indicated that there was simply no way that the doctor could have known about it, and he did everything he could to save her when the emergency arose.

The second case was a pregnant woman who was rushed into the hospital for complications. The doctor on call came in with alcohol on his breath. (Hours later he was tested by police and still was over the legal driving limit for blood alcohol content, so the guy was operating dead drunk.) He determined that he was going to have to perform an emergency c-section on the woman, but wound up cutting her large intestine open and she experienced massive hemorrhaging. She also went into a coma and developed something akin to peritonitis.

These two cases are clearly different. While the woman in the first case certainly experienced something tragic, I think some measure of protection should be afforded to the doctor. In the second case, the doctor seemed clearly culpable and should lose his license, with the patient and her family being due some huge amount of money. Regulations such as the ones Bush seems prepared to propose are going to have to be looked at very carefully.

On the surface, it looks like Bush is trying to do something good for doctors and for an insurance system that is extremely burdened. However, like Ron, I prefer to retain a healthy level of skepticism. Whenever this president looks like he's offering an olive branch to the people, experience has taught us to look out for a hidden giveaway for insurance companies or other big business at the expense of ordinary citizens.

Let's tread carefully on this one. Shame on the networks for not wanting to air commercials that bring an important topic like this into the public debate.

Note: You can view the ad here and judge for yourself. Link found via Oliver Willis, who sees it as supression favoring the White House.