Karl, What Do you think of smoking? and the proposed tobacco settlement?
How about YOUR question here?
Read below or choose another question.
Footnotes to article by Karl Loren
June 3, 1998
Under the McCain bill, the lawyers would dip into two pots of tobacco cash. The first is the $200 billion to $300 billion over 25 years that the 50 states would get as reimbursement under their Medicaid lawsuits. The lawyers took the states to the cleaners by signing up on a contingency fee basis.
Mr. Brickman assumes the average such fee would be about 15% of the Medicaid payout, a conservative estimate given that Florida's lawyers are suing (what else?) to get 25% of that state's settlement. But even 15% means that a few hundred lawyers would thus divide between $30 billion and $45 billion over 25 years, or $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion each year.
The other pot of tobacco cash under McCain is the estimated $8 billion a year that would be made available to pay off tort suits filed by smokers and other tobacco "victims." (The $8 billion is supposed to be a maximum, but the Senate may kill even this liability cap this month.) Under their normal contingency fee of 30% to 40%, the lawyers would get between $2.6 billion and $3.2 billion a year. Add the tort cases to the Medicaid settlements, and the overall lawyer windfall climbs to between $3.8 billion and $5 billion every year--for the next 25 years!
Making a generous assumption for the number of hours worked, Mr. Brickman calculates that some of the lawyers would thus earn $92,000 an hour. "There are 20 to 25 lawyers who would become billionaires under McCain," says Mr. Brickman.
At a minimum, this windfall is unethical given that 37 states have a legal code of ethics requiring that fees be "reasonable." Tobacco lawyers aren't entrepreneurs taking a flyer on a risky idea. They are fiduciaries providing a service. They don't create wealth, but merely redistribute it. In the tobacco case they are using government power (the state attorneys general and now Congress) to extort fees from private companies, so government in the form of Congress has every legal and moral right to limit those fees.
And if Congress doesn't act, no one else will. State Attorney General Dan Morales is currently backing the lawyers' demand for 15% of the Texas settlement, and the McCain bill calls for the fees to go to "arbitration," which has no fee limits. The arbitrators are likely to be other lawyers who won't want to cramp the style of their colleagues.
Compared with the tobacco lawyers' greed, the Ganske and Norwood bills seem almost benign. But they need to be understood as preparing the way to make HMOs and health insurers the next pot of gold for trial lawyers. In the name of "patient rights," the bills would remove the state lawsuit exemptions that now apply to health insurers and employers under the Employee Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).
This exemption was designed to protect the financial stability of the health insurance system and to distinguish between treatment decisions and insurance coverage. But this means doctors and hospitals have borne the brunt of the medical malpractice lawsuit boom. Rather than rein in these suits, Drs. Ganske (surgeon) and Norwood (dentist) would merely force other deep pockets to help them pay the legal tab.
Imagine what the trial bar would do when it discovers it can sue an employer and its insurer because that insurer declined to pay for a certain medical procedure. Insurance costs would rise, the smallest employers would drop coverage altogether, and the quality of care would diminish--the opposite of what the Ganskes and Norwoods claim to want.
And imagine what the trial bar would do to American politics with all of these new riches. Most of their political contributions go to Democrats, who tend to oppose even the smallest legal reform. Baltimore tort king Peter Angelos dominates the Maryland legislature as it is. With his tobacco windfall, he and his legal friends would be able to make the House and Senate wholly owned subsidiaries too. Forget about tort reform for the next quarter century.
It's hard to believe a GOP Congress serious about power would permit this to happen. Senator Trent Lott is the leader we'd hold most responsible for such a debacle, since he has allowed the McCain bill to move along without limits on tobacco fees. Is Mr. Lott carrying water for his brother-in-law Richard Scruggs, one of the tobacco billionaires-in-waiting?
We hope not. But a party that enriches its political opponents in this way will soon lose its majority, and will deserve to.
Copyright © 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Printing, distribution, and use of this material is governed by your Subscription Agreement and copyright laws. For information, go to http://wsj.com
Permission granted to post my message to which you are responding. Thank you for the prompt reply.
In essence, I am (a) agreeing with you on the moral corruption in many ways, while (b) elaborating, focusing, and refining the fact aspect.
Leroy J. Pletten, Ph.D.
P.S. I reread what I sent, noticed a couple of typos, fixed them. So as to post only "good writing," if you note any I overlooked, please correct them before posting.
In counseling, one does not like to per se "agree" or "disagree" but to provide additional information. Once the client internalizes the data, then he'll see where he can improve his analysis.
To one with an Army background, I emphasize "sharp shooting," the "rifle approach." Providing the data as I do, is done with intent to help end the "shotgun" approach.
So as to avoid offense, I thus write in two ways (1) direct with respect to the facts, which are objectively verifiable, and (b) obliquely so as to assist people to see any misaiming in their analyses.
I have published some material on the facts, in 26 Smoke Signals 4 (Oct 1980) -- a tobacco costs to society analysis, showing that -- contrary to then myth that "tobacco pays its way," that tobacco costs society $130 billion (1980 dollars) in damages; 86 N Y St J Med 493 (Sep 1986); 3 Indoor Air Rev 3 (April 1993) -- both saying tobacco violates emissions rules, e.g., 29 CFR 1910.1000, due to the toxic chemicals far above safe limits , e.g., the "speed limit" for carbon monoxide is 35 whereas tobacco smoke is doing 42,000!! --thus showing why it kills!!; and 87 Am J Public Health 869-870 (May 1997) -- listing model laws 1858 - presnet on controlling tobacco, including criminal prosecution of the pushers for poisoning/murder.
In brief, I don't make the mistake of trial lawyers, not suing the farmers. I'd jail them, and the rat poison plant (coumarin from trilisa odoratissima plants) farmers. Trilisa farmers are accomplices of tobacco farmers. They produce millions of pounds of trilisa annually -- for the clear purpose of killing people. (We don't need millions of pounds for merely rat poisoning rats; America doesn't have that many!!)
I see tobacco and trilisa farmers as the Confederate Army, out of uniform, killing because they want to, and went into it in a big way after the Civil War. It was shortly after the Civil War, 1884, that a doctor, Laurence Johnson, noticed the formula change, the adding of coumarin, and published the fact. Ultimately, down the road, I want to do a similar book, meaning, reprint the data. But I'm not a publisher.
Tobacco is the delivery agent for the gateway drug. Tobacco companies said repeatedly in court in the 1870's-1880's that nicotine is a drug.
It is the gateway drug, youngest onset, age 12. It introduces children to the drug lifestyle. It is from smoker children that drug abuse occurs.
Nonsmokers won't use the first used drug, nicotine, so rarely ever use others in the sequence.
By 1854, it was established medically that the result is that it is in the smoker population that crime occurs. 90% of crime is by smokers, only 10% by nonsmokers.
Smoking is not a choice. Instead, tobacco chemcials cause abulia and acalculia, the opposite of choice.
Tobacco smoke in the air is not a choice for unborn babies, vast numbers of whom are slaughtered each year by smoker mothers. Such baby-killing is called "miscarriage" -- "abortion" when the smoker mother uses that technique.
Tobacco smoke in the air is not a choice for the 150,000 nonsmokers each year in the U.S. slaughtered by it.
After the Civil War, angry Confedeates soldiers went into the cigarette business, changed the tobacco formula to add coumarin (rat poison). Their goal: to mass slaughter Yankees in revenge for the North winning the Civil War.
So I counsel people to seek enforcement of the laws against poisoning/murdering people, withr espect to tobacco smoke. Its two key ingredients, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, as such good killers that Hitler, a smoker expelled from school at age for smoking, used them to mass slaughter. Hitler was no different than any other smoker. He too had abulia. The only difference between him and others smokers, is that he had governmental power, so he could indulge his abulia on a wider scale than other smokers.
Smoking is a mental disorder recognized in the medical literature including ICD-9, and DSM-III and DSM-IV. In 1977, the Surgeon General's colleagues said that if the disinformation to the public ceased (that smoking is a mere habit) and if the public became aware that smoking is a mental disorder, the toxic chemicals cause brain damage, that would revolutionize the public attitude to tobacco.
Naturally, when I counsel, I emphasize this, along with the other facts, all in the public domain, published and republished since 1854.
Leroy sent me the following on December 2, 1998, now published also:
Michigan is the 10th smokiest state.
Please help us; read my Petition for action to get violators to "cease and desist," at
http://geocities.com/WallStreet/Market/4809/lpetition.html
Please download, sign and send the Petition. Also please forward this request for help to others also pro-health like you.
Thank you.
Leroy J. Pletten
P.S. I have also written in the New York State Journal of Medicine, page 493 (Sep 1986) and Indoor Air Review, page 3 (April 1993) on the 1970 federal emissions rule 29 CFR 1910.1000 that, if enforcement were started, would protect all of us from cigarettes' airborne toxic chemicals. The current Petition is a small start, to at least get one cigarette control law enforced in one state. That can be an example for the others. Then we can work on getting the federal rule enforced. (Laws/rules are available at larger libraries).
|
I promise to answer your message -- click here to send me a personal message
|
SUBSCRIBE: The Wednesday Letter is a free electronic monthly newsletter written and published by Karl Loren. You can view more than 50 back issues of this publication by clicking here. The Wednesday Letter subscription list is maintained on a secure server, no name is ever given or sold to anyone, and it is never used except for this Newsletter. It is automatically published on the Tuesday night just before the first Wednesday of every month. You can subscribe to this free monthly electronic letter by entering your eMail address and name below. You will then automatically receive a request for confirmation, sent to whatever address you have entered. If you do NOT receive this confirmation request, then you will not be subscribed. There may have been an error with your address and you should resubmit. The letter is never sent twice to the same address -- so you do not have to worry about a duplicate subscription. When you receive this confirmation request you must reply to it, or your subscription will not become active. No one can subscribe your name, and address, without you being notified, and if you get an unwanted notice of subscription you only need to DO NOTHING and the subscription will NOT be active.
REMOVAL: You can remove yourself from the subscription list in several different ways. Click here to read about this entire newsletter system. Every edition of The Wednesday Letter is delivered to your address with YOUR name and address in view on the letter, with a link that allows you to remove THAT name from the subscription list. If you try to send this removal message from an address different from the one you used to send in your original confirmation, then you will get a warning notice first, sent to the subscription address, asking you to confirm that you want to be removed from the list -- by replying to THAT request for confirmation, you will then be automatically removed. Thus, no one else can unsubscribe you, from some other computer, without your knowledge. But, if you send in the unsubscribe notice from the same machine used to receive the Letter, then the removal from the subscription list is automatic.
Personal Message: When you send a personal message to Karl Loren, you will receive a personal reply as per his instructions. Karl pledges that every personal message will get a personal answer. When you provide your mail address, we will send you free information including our free catalog and a cassette tape lecture by Karl Loren about heart disease, no charge, by mail, even if outside the US. You can select particular information you would like to receive, along with the free cassette tape and catalog.
You can reach Vibrant Life in many ways, including by mail to Vibrant Life, 2808 N. Naomi St., Burbank, CA 91504. Within the US and Canada, use the toll free number: (800) 523-4521, the local number: (818) 558-1799, the FAX: (818) 558-7299, eMail to kimberly@oralchelation.com or any one of the hundreds of message forms throughout the 50 web sites. Vibrant Life normally ships the same day we get an order. There are message forms on each of the 100,000+ pages on this and other sites where you can communicate with Vibrant Life. Check out our companion site, at: http://www.oralchelation.net where Karl's 2000 page book is published. Karl Loren is the author and webmaster for this BOOK, as well as for another web site about ORAL CHELATION. His personal philosophical articles are at PHILOSOPHY.
Copyright © May 20, 2008 6:23 AM by Karl Loren on behalf of Vibrant Life, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Permission is granted for non-commercial downloading, copying, distribution or redistribution on two conditions: One, that some form of copyright notice is included in every copy distributed or copied, showing the copyright belonging to Vibrant Life, Burbank, CA, at www.oralchelation.com . The second condition is that the material is not to be used for any purpose contrary to the purposes and objectives of this site. This permission does not extend to materials on this site which are copyrighted by others.
