Sneak preview. Peon that I am, and far from the centers of power, I can nevertheless tell you what one of the highlights of the upcoming State of the Union speech is going to be: the case for medical liability reform, otherwise known as "let's fuck the trial lawyers once and for all."

Now, it wouldn't necessarily be a great leap from the available evidence to make this inference: Bush delivered a widely reported speech on the subject earlier this month in Madison County, Illinois (chosen for the occasion as the alleged "epicenter" of the liability "crisis"), with the promise of legislative action to follow in Congress. The speech, and (an extremely well massaged summary of) the proposed legislation, is featured prominently on the White House propaganda site: so clearly the timing is being set for the SOTU, and a Congressional push shortly thereafter. (In a nutshell, the legislation would federalize what is now a state-by-state medical malpractice system and drastically hinder the ability of patients to bring suit, or to receive significant payouts when harmed.)

My inference, though, has a different basis. I still have some contacts within the Chicago ad world, and I learned today that the AMA (headquartered in Chicago) is seeking spec designs from several agencies for a print ad that will run, full-page and in color, in the major national newspapers (the NY Times and USA Today among them) on the morning after Bush delivers the State of the Union. I've actually seen a few of the design treatments. The ads are going to flack the President's deep concern over the medical liability crisis and pledge the AMA to stand with him in the cause of reform.

There's even a poster child, at least in some versions of the ad: a young man of seventeen who, we're told, didn't make it to eighteen because "the neurosurgeon who might have saved him" was forced to move to Florida, in flight from rising insurance premiums. The notion that access to medical care is compromised due to the burden imposed by malpractice lawsuits is essentially a canard, as the GAO has reported: see the citations in this useful mythbusting document from the Center for Justice and Democracy. (It's a measure of just how aggressively the phrase "medical liability reform" is being marketed that the CJD doc is the first piece of critical commentary to be turned up by a Google search on the phrase, and doesn't show until you're about five pages deep in the results.) But it'll make a great sob story; what are the odds that some version gets flacked in the SOTU?

Now, as inside information goes, this don't exactly make me Deep Throat. But it's a nice glimpse into how the system works, and into just how coordinated it is in that corporate-state way, between the official agencies of the government on the one hand, and on the other the supposedly "private" groups that in a case like this operate as arms of the state in all but name. The White House tips the AMA to the content and emphasis of the health part of the State of the Union speech; it wouldn't in the least surprise me if the AMA's PR people had played a role in consulting on the language to be used. And then the doc lobby turns around and keys a prominent, expensive ad buy to the lead it knows the speech will provide it. Which to this extent makes our constitutionally-mandated SOTU, as interpreted by the Bush regime, little more than the free-media cog in a big public relations scam.

posted by michael  10:02:40 PM  
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No government that does not aspire to tyranny has any need to permit itself the practice of torture.

Which means that it's incumbent on me as a citizen to oppose the nomination of Alberto Gonzalez to be Attorney General of the United States. This is posted in solidarity with the statement today on Daily Kos: "The policies for which Gonzales provided a cover of legality - views which he expressly reasserted in his Senate confirmation hearings - inexorably led to abuses that have undermined military discipline and the moral authority our nation once carried. His actions led directly to documented violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and widespread abusive conduct in locales around the world." The nomination of this man is repugnant, or ought to be, to the conscience of every American and indeed of every civilized person.

And, as a practical matter, I add this, which I've communicated to my Senators, Dick Durbin and Barack Obama: I consider the Gonzalez nomination a litmus test, and I make a pledge that I will refuse to vote for, or in any other way support, now and in the future, any Senator who fails to oppose it.

posted by michael  6:02:34 PM  
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