Metro

Enough of this Albany malpractice

As a general rule, New York Times editorials have an inverse relation ship to reality. The harder they bang on an issue, the more you can be certain they are wrong.

So it is with Gov. Cuomo’s plan to limit “pain and suffering” awards to $250,000 in medical-malpractice cases. The Times accuses Cuomo and hospitals of bad faith, and claims the plan will “punish patients badly injured by medical negligence.” It demands a “debate . . . that includes legal experts and patients’ advocates.”

Oh, yes, the “legal experts,” especially those who double as members of the Legislature. Perhaps that well-known “patient advocate,” Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, of Weitz & Luxenberg employ, could join the debate.

Or maybe Republican state Sen. John DeFrancisco of Syracuse could weigh in. He is against caps on awards and lawyers’ fees and just happens to be “of counsel” to a tort firm where his son is a partner.

Their ilk have made a killing with a bipartisan malpractice scam that helps explain why New York’s Medicaid costs are tops in the country. The system is ridiculously expensive, a boon to trial lawyers and too often bears no resemblance to actual medical mistakes.

It’s long past time for a new model that takes care of families with legitimate needs, but without unduly enriching ambulance chasers and gouging taxpayers. Democrat Cuomo’s plan offers that combination.

In fact, of all his ideas for confronting Albany’s spending addiction and entitlement culture, none is more important than the cap on malpractice payouts.

The savings could be enormous, as much as $350 million a year just in reduced insurance premiums for hospitals, which will enable the state to cut Medicaid payments to them. Equally important, limiting “pain and suffering” to $250,000 likely will slam the brakes on defensive tests and procedures that doctors do only to limit exposure in lawsuits.

Consider the lessons of Texas and California. They are among the 26 states with similar caps, and insurance premiums for doctors and hospitals fell by up to a third in the last seven years.

During the same time, premiums in New York soared by more than 50 percent and are now pricing some doctors out of business.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital says it spends $132 million a year on malpractice insurance, Montefiore spends $130 million and Beth Israel, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and Long Island College hospitals together spend $116 million.

“Do you know how many nurses you could hire with that money?” says Ken Raske, head of Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group that has joined the main health-care union, Local 1199, to support Cuomo’s plan.

Raske cites a study showing that state hospitals pay $1.6 billion in annual malpractice insurance, with trial lawyers raking in $352 million of that. His office says $105 million of the $352 million stems from non-economic damages.

The most outrageous aspect of the lottery approach to lawsuits is that many of the biggest awards have little or nothing to do with actual malpractice. Juries often set awards on the basis of disability rather than responsibility.

That is especially true when impaired babies are involved, with the result that obstetrics often account for half of all malpractice claims. Again, the Medicaid implications are enormous, because half of all babies born in the state are born to mothers on Medicaid.

If anything, Cuomo’s plan is modest. There is no change in patient rights to sue or any cap on the award for medical care and lost income. Lawyers would still get their fees on those claims, which vary depending on size of the award.

They just wouldn’t be able to spin gold out of “pain and suffering” while putting an extra bite on taxpayers.

MAKE NO ‘MISTAKE’

“The fog of war” is what commanders face after the first shot is fired. Comes now President Obama’s war of choice in Libya, where the “fog of words” hides the plan of battle itself.

Liberals who love nuance — that’s redundant — are in their glory over the fuzzy terms of engagement. The mixed messages about the mission, the end game, who’s in charge — it’s all so not George W. Bush.

The lack of clarity, the Obama White House insists, is a virtue, including having a commander in chief who’s out of the country while it’s bombs away. It’s the first war run by a multitasking telecommander.

Of course, that’s how Mayor “Bermuda” Bloomberg supervised New York’s response to the Christmas blizzard. That went so well, there’s no reason why Obama shouldn’t continue his working vacation while he launches a third war in the Mideast.

Besides, if it doesn’t succeed — no “victory” allowed — it will be Hillary’s fault. She and other war-mongering fems talked him into it, you know.

The Bushies went to war with their chicken hawks, the Obamas go with their hawkish chicks. Yet this mission is so pure and simple that we’ll soon be turning over control to others, Obama assures, so “we are one partner among many.”

This is a fiction wrapped inside a fig leaf. The United States has 11 warships in the region, with one each for the Brits and French. Nearly all the missiles fired were American, and our “partners” already are fighting over who would lead if we step aside.

Italy demands NATO control, while France and Turkey say no way. Washington says it’s fine with having the French and Brits share control, but we never before put our troops under the command of any other nation, which is why NATO’s supreme commander is always American.

The Arabs, whose approval Clinton trumpeted as a “sea change,” are fickle friends. Qatar is reportedly sending four — four! — aircraft. The United Arab Emirates promised to help enforce the no-fly zone, but now miffed at American policy on Bahrain, will only provide “humanitarian assistance.”

Welcome to the future, where Moammar Khadafy is the least of our problems.

MAKE NO ‘MISTAKE’

Proving again that politicians have a unique gift for chutzpah. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, recently owned up to charging taxpayers $88,000 for political trips on a plane she and her husband partially own. Now she admits she also failed to pay $287,000 in property taxes on the plane.

Gleeful Republicans note she co-sponsored a bill that would fire federal employees who have unpaid taxes. Doesn’t that make her a hypocrite?

Of course not, an aide insisted. “She didn’t knowingly do this. This is a situation where a mistake was made.”

Right, mistakes were made, passive tense, no subject and certainly no guilt. Got that, sucker?


A thirst for looting

The Wall Street Journal has a story that is oddly comforting. There’s finally been looting in Japan:

SENDAI, Japan — When a tsunami blasted through Kirin Brewery’s seaside fa cilities here, it tipped over giant beer-storage tanks and spread a blanket of beer bottles, barrels and other goods across the port. The beverages that spilled out were then hit a second time: by a surge of thirsty residents. Witnesses say hundreds of people carted off beer, coffee, juice and other goods that had escaped Ki rin’s massive warehouse when the tsunami waters receded. “All kinds of people came and were taking things away, they kept coming until everything was gone,” a worker told the paper.