Senate Steel Cage Match-up: Trial Lawyers vs. Heroic Doctors

I can’t help but feel that the juxtaposition of these two stories - on the very day that Senator John Edwards announced his formation of a presidential exploratory committee – do not bode well for the former trial-lawyer’s candidacy:

1.) The report about surgeon-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist stopping to help paramedics after a deadly car wreck in Florida. By all accounts, Frist provided critical medical attention, quite likely saving someone’s life, then “He sneaked out before he could get any thanks or glory -- a true hero.”

2.) This AP story from Charleston, West Virginia where 18 out of 19 surgeons in the city’s four hospitals took a one-week leave of absence to protest spiraling malpractice insurance costs: “The surgeons want the state to make it harder to file malpractice lawsuits, which they say would eventually lower insurance premiums.”

Somehow, I think it will be difficult for John Edwards to address health care issues without coming to grips with the growing elephant-in-the-room of tort reform. Seeing how the Democrats are a wholly-own subsidiary of the Trial Lawyers Association, it will be interesting to see what kind of position he takes to help “regular people” when doctors simply refuse to work.