--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood@panix.com> wrote:

>Where the right stands on this is irrelevant.

No it's not. The point I'm now making for the third time is that your 
anecdotal evidence of litigation massively distorting U.S. medical 
practice emerges from the right-wing propaganda mill, and you're 
recycling it uncritically. They have a reason for pushing it - they 
want to shield docs and hospitals from liability for the usual 
monetary reasons. I can't imagine why you're playing along.

Why this peculiar obsession with the origin of ideas?  I also want to 
shield docs and hospitals from liability, for very different reasons. 
Telling me that my examples come from the 'right-wing rumour mill' 
(yah boo hiss!) is irrelevant, unless you can demonstrate that the 
rest of my argument is necessarily right wing. But you haven't tried 
to do this, you've just repeated three times that it's really 
important that some right wingers make some superficially similar 
points.

Similarly, Doug says, "You're an RCP alum, right? This argument bears 
the perverse marks of origin."  Yes, and it was the best education 
that I ever had.  But I graduated a long time ago. So this has about 
as much relevance as accusing you of being an old right winger.

Doug: "Why can't people do two things at once, and why do you suggest 
they can't?"

They can, and I don't. The question is whether doing one thing 
(supporting litigation) is actually a barrier to doing another 
(promoting a civilized health service. Maybe we'll just be 
dismissed as cranks if we fight tort reform by doing anything 
other than the status quo. But if we assume this, then we'll 
make it so.  And we risk losing our voice and simply becoming 
part of the chorus to some one else's song.

James