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The Oregon Herald is a non-commercial, non-profit, ad free news publication.
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One Radical Opinion by "Radical" Russ Belville |
"Radical" Russ Belville was born on the first day of the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War in the town of Nampa in the "red" state of Idaho, where any opinion to the left of Reagan gets you labeled as "radical". He currently resides in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon (a.k.a. "Little Beirut") where he works in Information Technology. In his spare time, he enjoys writing about current events, playing the six-string bass guitar, and volunteering for liberal political causes. You can contact him via e-mail at letters 'at' radicalruss.net. |
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| Home | Vote No on Measures 35 and 38 | <Back | Next> |
| One of the most disturbing aspects of the conservative ideology's
rise to power is the promotion of the welfare of corporations. No-bid contracts
for Halliburton, energy policy dictated by oil companies in secret meetings
with the Vice President, Medicare bills that discourage controlling runaway
pharmaceutical company profits, Capitol Hill rumblings about "tort
reform" legislation – in almost every issue that comes before
this administration, you can be sure that profit comes before people.
This wave of corporate coddling comes to bear on Oregon in the form of two measures on this fall's ballot. Measure 35 seeks to limit non-economic damages juries can award plaintiffs in cases against healthcare providers for negligence or recklessness. Measure 38 intends to abolish the State Accident Insurance Fund (SAIF) and force the state to privatize worker's compensation insurance. In other words, Measures 35 & 38 benefit large corporations by removing two roadblocks to unimpeded profiteering: the punitive power of juries and competition from the government. Supporters of Measure 35 will sometimes call it "tort reform". They will scare people with visions of poor country doctors who cannot afford their insurance premiums. They will blame the high cost of insurance on "frivolous lawsuits", leading people to believe that a medical malpractice case is as laughable as that story of the old woman at the McDonald's drive-through who spilled hot coffee on herself and was awarded millions. Never mind the people who have been seriously disabled by negligent doctors or the fact that rising insurance costs have a lot to do with the insurance industry itself. If the law caps punitive damages, then they cease to be punitive. A large profitable corporation can then run a cost-benefit analysis and discover that it is cheaper to pay small court damages than to overhaul bad practices. Only juries free to affect a corporation's bottom line protect the people from this grim number crunching. Thomas Jefferson once said, "I consider trial by jury as the as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its Constitution." Certainly, what is good enough to keep governments in check is good enough to keep corporations in check. Measure 38 is another measure that helps the insurance industry. It should be no surprise that a major financial backer of this measure is an arm of the giant Liberty Mutual insurance company. The SAIF Corporation has kept Oregon's worker's compensation rates lower than our neighbors in Washington and California, and has done an excellent job in fulfilling its mission to provide for the people and businesses of Oregon. However, when viewed through the eyes of the corporate insurance giants like Liberty Mutual, SAIF is just another competitor holding on to a potentially lucrative market. Without SAIF controlling the costs, these companies gain all the benefits of state-mandated worker's compensation coverage with a mandate to do what is best for their shareholders, not the people of Oregon. Vote no on both Measure 35 and Measure 38. |