Funny: A Doctor's Plan for Legal Industry Reform

From the WSJ, A Doctor's Plan for Legal Industry Reform

Physicians have never been so insulted. Because of these affronts, I will gladly volunteer for the important duty of controlling and regulating lawyers. Since most of what lawyers do is repetitive boilerplate or pushing paper, physicians would have no problem dictating what is appropriate for attorneys. We physicians know much more about legal practice than lawyers do about medicine.

Following are highlights of a proposed bill authorizing the dismantling of the current framework of law practice and instituting socialized legal care:

• Contingency fees will be discouraged, and eventually outlawed, over a five-year period. This will put legal rewards back into the pockets of the deserving—the public and the aggrieved parties. Slick lawyers taking their "cut" smacks of a bookie operation. Attorneys will be permitted to keep up to 3% in contingency cases, the remainder going into a pool for poor people.

And he doesn't even mention tort reform!

On the healthcare issue, here are my modest two cents, from personal experience. There is a non-Governmental organization called the Joint Commission (or JAHCO) that regulates hospitals. It can accredit and certify hospitals, in effect, shut them down.

Having seen JAHCO in action close up, I can honestly say that may God help us all if American healthcare becomes even more of a Government bureaucracy than it already is. The incompetence and small mindedness is exactly what you would expect from bureaucrats. It is a nightmare straight out of Brezhnev, or if you prefer, Dilbert.