Old Glory = Street Gang Colors?
Colorful beads lead to court
Student claims Schenectady school district cannot ban her red, white and blue necklace
By MICHELE MORGAN BOLTON, Times Union Staff writer First published: Thursday, February 17, 2005
ALBANY -- A Mont Pleasant middle school student is taking her freedom-of-expression fight to federal court, claiming Schenectady school officials have no right to ban her from wearing a handmade red, white and blue necklace to class.
The beads, which Raven Furbert got as a string-it-yourself Christmas gift, symbolize love of country and respect for soldiers serving in Iraq, according to the lawsuit her mother, Katie Grzywna, filed in U.S. District Court in Albany.Among those soldiers is her uncle, J. Barnes, who is a member of the Army National Guard's 42nd Rainbow Division, and three other relatives. Barnes shipped out to Kuwait in October, and went on active duty in Iraq the first week in January.
Raven, 12, made the necklace over the Christmas vacation and wore it on her first day back to school on Jan. 4. She said it was to commemorate Barnes' move into a danger zone and that it is her way of trying to protect him.
She said she can't understand what the big deal is. "I just want to wear them for my uncle," she said. "I'll be really glad when this is all over."
Schenectady school officials immediately banned her from displaying her unique neckwear in a belief such "gang-related" jewelry violates policy, court papers alleged.
posted by L. E. Howard, Jr. | 8:18 AM
6 Comments:
Lowell,
Per our earlier discussions about the rising costs of healthcare, here is an article that delves into the other side of the argument. Thought you might enjoy hearing the other side.
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February 22, 2005
The New York Times
Behind Those Medical Malpractice Rates
By JOSEPH B. TREASTER and JOEL BRINKLEY
Speaking before hundreds of doctors and medical workers in a St. Louis suburb last month, President Bush called attention to a neurosurgeon on stage with him in the small auditorium. The doctor, the president said, was paying $265,000 a year in premiums for insurance against malpractice claims.
Such high prices, "don't start in an examining room or an operating room," the president declared. "They start in a courtroom."
Indeed, at many recent appearances, Mr. Bush has complained about the "skyrocketing" costs of "junk lawsuits" against doctors and hospitals.
But for all the worry over higher medical expenses, legal costs do not seem to be at the root of the recent increase in malpractice insurance premiums. Government and industry data show only a modest rise in malpractice claims over the last decade. And last year, the trend in payments for malpractice claims against doctors and other medical professionals turned sharply downward, falling 8.9 percent, to a nationwide total of $4.6 billion, according to data compiled by the Health and Human Services Department.
"There is an underlying cost push," said J. Robert Hunter, the director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, who is a former insurance regulator in Texas. "But there has not been an explosion of big jury verdicts or settlements. It's a constant drip, drip every year."
Lawsuits against doctors are just one of several factors that have driven up the cost of malpractice insurance, specialists say. Lately, the more important factors appear to be the declining investment earnings of insurance companies and the changing nature of competition in the industry.
The recent spike in premiums - which is now showing signs of steadying - says more about the insurance business than it does about the judicial system.
"You get these jolts in insurance prices periodically, and they attract a lot of attention," said Frank A. Sloan, a Duke University economist who has been following medical malpractice trends for nearly 20 years. "They're a result of a confluence of many things."
Data compiled by both the federal government and by insurance organizations show costs for the insurance companies climbing steadily over the last decade at an average annual rate of about 3 percent, after adjusting for inflation. Over most of that period, premiums for doctors rose modestly and sometimes even dropped as the insurance companies battled for market share in a scramble to collect more money to invest in strong bond and stock markets. But when the markets turned sour and the reserves of insurers shriveled, companies began to double and triple the costs for doctors.
"The insurers were catching up, getting to where they should have been," said Larry Smarr, the president of the Physician Insurers Association of America, a trade group of companies that provide more than 60 percent of the nation's medical malpractice insurance.
While acknowledging the impact of industry forces and practices on prices, Mr. Smarr and many others in the insurance industry still regard lawsuits as their biggest problem. Claims of medical malpractice are typically complex and are rarely paid without a lawsuit or the threat of a lawsuit. If the insurance companies could find a way to limit payments for lawsuits, they say, they could significantly reduce their costs.
President Bush, supported by the insurance industry and the American Medical Association, is proposing a remedy: a national limit on what juries can award in medical malpractice cases. Such a limit, or cap, has often been cited by the president as an important part of what has been called tort reform - limiting what Mr. Bush calls costly and frivolous lawsuits.
The Bush administration is pushing for a $250,000 limit on jury awards to victims of medical mistakes and their families for pain and suffering. No limit would be placed on the more quantifiable payments for economic losses, including medical expenses and lost wages.
Introduction of legislation calling for such national medical malpractice limits - traditionally left to individual states - is at least a month away. Still, the administration has been bolstered by stronger Republican majorities in the House and Senate and by last week's signing into law of a measure that would move many class-action lawsuits to federal court, sharply limiting their potential spread.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, who is a doctor, calls malpractice award limits "a majority priority." The House has passed similar proposals seven times in the last 10 years, most recently in 2003.
While this Congress might be the best opportunity yet for supporters of jury award limits, there will certainly be a fierce battle from Democrats, consumer groups and plaintiffs' lawyers.
Consumer advocates say such limits would mean that some of the most seriously hurt patients would not receive fair compensation. Also, they say, in the death of an infant, an elderly person or a homemaker, there would be little compensation because of the prevailing view that there could be no economic loss because no income was being earned.
Trial lawyers and consumer groups have been parading heart-wrenching victims of doctors' mistakes to make their argument. Among them, the American Trial Lawyers Association says, is Alice Lloyd of North Carolina. Doctors failed to treat her blood infection for so long that finally they had to amputate both legs above her knees, her left arm and all the fingers from her right hand. She still has her right thumb.
As the two sides dig in for a fight in Congress, 27 states have already adopted award limits, with caps ranging from $250,000 to $1 million. In some states, insurers have agreed to reduce, at least temporarily, premiums in exchange for limits on awards.
Insurers say that caps not only promise lower costs, but greater predictability on potential payouts. "It takes an unknown entity, which is the pain and suffering component, and makes it quantifiable and estimate-able," said Mr. Smarr of the Physician Insurers Association of America.
Insurers acknowledge that they consider several factors besides claims costs in setting prices for doctors. In the 1990's, even as their costs were rising, malpractice insurers held firm on prices, even lowering them in some years to hold or win a share of the market.
"You always try to say you're not chasing market share," said Donald J. Zuk, the chief executive of Scipie, a medical malpractice insurer that does business in about 30 states. "On the other hand, you have to have a certain market share, you have to show a certain amount of growth, or you don't survive."
But by the late 1990's, some insurers discovered that they had dropped prices well below the cost of paying claims. Several went out of business. One of the biggest insurers, the St. Paul Companies, now Travelers St. Paul Companies, stopped offering medical malpractice coverage.
The surviving companies "had to raise prices or go out of business," Mr. Smarr said.
In 2000, about the same time that under-pricing and other market conditions began to push up prices in medical malpractice, the much larger world of commercial insurance was also going through a cycle of higher prices. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks cost insurers $40 billion and accelerated the upward pressure of the latest premium cycle.
Martin D. Weiss, the chairman of Weiss Ratings Inc., an independent financial rating agency, said the cyclical nature of the insurance business and a drop in insurers' investment earnings when markets fell had been among the strongest forces behind the rise in medical malpractice premiums.
Over the last year, insurance analysts say, prices for most lines of commercial insurance appear to have peaked and have begun to decline. While prices for medical malpractice coverage are not yet falling, they rose less steeply in 2004.
Costs for most doctors last year rose between 6.9 percent and 24.9 percent compared with increases of between 10 percent and 49 percent in 2003, according to The Medical Liability Monitor, a newsletter published in Chicago.
The most expensive place in the country is South Florida, where some obstetricians and general surgeons paid nearly $280,000 for coverage last year, according to The Monitor. Obstetricians in Illinois paid as much as $230,428, The Monitor said, while in Nebraska, the least expensive place in the country for malpractice insurance, obstetricians paid $16,194. Florida adopted a cap on awards of $500,000 to $1 million in 2003. Illinois has no cap and Nebraska has a cap of $500,000.
The recent jump in premiums shows little correlation to the rise in claims. According to the National Practitioner Data Bank of the Health and Human Services Department, the total paid out by insurance companies for claims against doctors and other medical professionals rose 3.1 percent annually, on average, between 1993 and 2003 and then declined last year.
The average payment in 2003 for malpractice, the data bank said, was $268,605, up from $197, 753 in 1993, after adjusting for inflation. In 2004, the average payment fell to $262,486 and the number of payments made for medical malpractice cases dropped to 17,696 from 18,996 the year before.
What may muddy the public picture is that while claims are rising at a measured pace, there have been more headline-grabbing big awards. Data compiled by the Physician Insurers Association of America show a distinct rise in payments of more than $1 million to victims of medical mistakes. In 1993, the organization said, 2.9 percent of the payments made by its companies exceeded $1 million. A decade later, 8.5 percent of the payments were for more than $1 million.
Many insurers regard the $250,000 limit in California as a model for Mr. Bush. They see it as largely responsible for California's shift from being one of the most expensive places for medical malpractice insurance to one of the least expensive. Consumer advocates, however, say the main reason costs for doctors have fallen in California has been a 1988 law that prohibits insurers from raising rates more than 15 percent a year without a public hearing.
And some researchers are skeptical that caps ultimately reduce costs for doctors. Mr. Weiss of Weiss Ratings and researchers at Dartmouth College, who separately studied data on premiums and payouts for medical mistakes in the 1990's and early 2000's, said they were unable to find a meaningful link between claims payments by insurers and the prices they charged doctors.
"We didn't see it," said Amitabh Chandra, an assistant professor of economics at Dartmouth. "Surprisingly, there appears to be a fairly weak relationship."
First of all, I can’t hide the fact that I think the New York Times is a worthless piece of garbage with about as much credibility as Joe Isuzu. Didn’t the Jayson Blair fiasco teach us anything?
Second, before I dissect this article, I’d like to say that I’m still undecided about how much health care insurance companies play into malpractice insurance rates and healthcare costs in general. There’s probably room for improvement, but I’m not prepared to go into great detail on this subject.
I will say, however, that I know firsthand what socialized medicine is all about, and, trust me, we don’t want it. Our system is imperfect, yes, but fully regulating all aspects of medicine in our country (like in Germany, Canada, or England) is not the way to go.
The authors say that the president has complained about the “skyrocketing” costs “junk lawsuits” in recent appearances.
Well, I’ve searched the president’s speeches with ProQuest and Google, but haven’t seen these words in same sentence, much less the same speech. Not recently. Not ever. (Challenge: If I’m wrong, please let me know.)
The president did recently say the following:
“Junk lawsuits change the way docs do their job. Instead of trying to heal the patients, doctors try not to get sued."
“Because junk lawsuits are so unpredictable, they drive up insurance costs for all doctors, even for those who have never been sued; even for those who have never had a claim against them. When insurance premiums rise, doctors have no choice but to pass some of the costs on to their patients. That means you're paying for junk lawsuits every time you go to see your doctor r. That's the effect of all the lawsuits.”
You should also consider that 70% of medical malpractice cases are closed with no payout, and of those that go to trial 70% of these cases that go to trial are won by the defendant. Can you say frivolous?
Medical malpractice insurance premiums are determined mainly by the insurance companies' returns on their investments, and not on awards paid out. No one is hiding the fact that insurance is a business. No one is holding a gun to your head to get health insurance.
If more Americans would save their money for medical contingencies and only purchase insurance for catastrophic events then a lot of these problems would go away.
Instead, however, the current climate has produced over-cautious doctors and led to the closing of medical practices. Think of all the money wasted on defensive medicine!
Bad doctors need to be removed. I don’t offer any solutions here, but rest assured the answer does not lie within our judicial system. Punishing incompetence is one thing, but frivolous lawsuits hurt everyone except the lawyers.
You might want to check out this article in the Wall Street Journal - “Business World: Wanna Fix Health Care? Stop Hiding the Cost!” by Holman W. Jenkins Jr. (WSJ Oct. 13, 2004, Opinion, pA17).
Lowell,
First of all, thank you for the kind note. As you might expect, things have only become more busy around here. ;-)
On your comments about the NYTimes. I am amazed at how many times people use Jayson Blair as an example of the Times being untrustworthy. Because to me, that situation shows that they are more trustworthy than most.
Let's remember that the NYTimes outted Blair. They discovered the problem and they fired him and the editors above him that missed his forgeries. Then they ran a full investigation of what had happened and disclosed all of their failures, resulting in a dramatic change in the news culture and more firings.
They did this to themselves because Jayson Blair is NOT representative of what they do. And they could have kept it quiet and simply dismissed him, but they felt they owed it to their readers to explain exactly what had happened and what steps they were taking to ensure it would never happen again.
Isn't this the way we want businesses (and maybe even governments?) to police themselves? Confess their sins and make dramatic changes to prevent more of the same?
I think the NYTimes can be arrogant and I don't appreciate the stranglehold they have on the news agenda for other outlets, but they do good work most of the time.
On your specific objection to the phrasing from this story, I am not aware of the President uttering those words together in the same sentence. The official White House releases say "stop the skyrocketing costs associated with frivolous lawsuits." And there are many references to the President saying "junk lawsuits."
Is your issue more the portrayal of the terms (which have both been used), or did you not like the combination of the two quotes together? I guess I'm wondering if you thought it created a false presentation of the President's position?
Now, on to healthcare. Remember that I was not claiming that lawsuits were not a problem in the system. I was claiming that they were one side of the triangle, with doctors and insurance companies being the other two. And drug companies have an effect also, so maybe we now have a square of causes.
And remember that the reason I had doctors in the mix was the unionization function of the AMA and the incredible amount of money they make. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what doctors do, but I also appreciate firefighters, policeman and journalists, none of whom make such large salaries.
And whether or not I appreciate them does not mean their rising salaries do not contribute to the rising costs of healthcare.
But it sounds like we have some middle ground here.
But I also don't have an answer to the problem. I do think that we should have a basic level of healthcare focused on the prevention of chronic ailments and emergency response. But I also believe that people should bear some responsibility for their individual choices (which cause most of the ailments and conditions to develop in the first place. For example, I feel for smokers who develop lung cancer, but I feel they should bear some responsibility for that condition).
So while I do not think socializing the whole program is the way to go (we are a capitalistic society, and I feel the more we mix our systems the worse our ability to govern ourselves is), I do think we should provide a basic set of services to keep people out of the hospital when we can prevent their conditions with cheaper treatments.
And believe it or not, I did read that WSJ piece when it came out. And it's a good thing, because once it disappears into their archive, there's no referring back to it without a subscription.
I'm just curious. You distrust the New York Times, but how do you feel about the WSJ? Do they have a bias? Are they reliable?
I'm just wondering what you think of them.
-jrs
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I understand busy. I’ve been married for nearly ten years. Prepare for the hardest, but most rewarding change in your life.
Anyway, I could point out many more examples where the NYTimes, which I believe to be incredibly biased, reports half-truths and misleading (at best) information.
You shouldn’t be amazed about my comments about the NYTimes and Jayson Blair. Contrary to what many revisionists would like you to believe, saying the NYTimes “outted Blair” is patently untrue. It’s a fairy tale. But that’s precisely what they want you to believe. Fortunately, the evidence is out there.
Macarena Hernandez, San Antonio Express-News, concluded that Blair stole her material and reported it. Saying that the NYTimes reported this is equivalent to turning yourself in to the police after being caught on videotape. They could have circled their wagons, but the risk was too great. It is that simple. They took the Clintonian approach: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.
You might want to look at this page from TimesWatch, a self-appointed watchdog for the NYTimes, “The Top 10 Distortions by the Times in Campaign 2004”: http://www.timeswatch.org/reports/04/report1104.asp.
TimesWatch and its parent, the Media Research Center, are decidedly right-of-center. This isn’t a secret. That said, I encourage you to look at this with an open mind.
Even if one is blind to the bias in the NYTimes news stories (forget about the editorials), one has to question their story selection and timing during last year’s campaign.
Yes, I’m more inclined to trust the WSJ. The WSJ, at least to me, seems more fair and unbiased in its reporting.
Lowell,
Yes, your point about the San Antonio Express-News is a fair one. And to be even more fair, the investigation uncovered several other attempts by journalists from a variety of publications to alert the paper about what was happening, alerts that did not reach the editorial managers.
Which was why the NYT fired the editorial managers in question, for setting a culture that did not allow criticism to make it to the decision-makers.
But my point is that, whoever sounded the initial alert, it was the NYT who burned Blair at the stake, not anyone else. They were surprising open with their newsroom culture and published all of their sins for everyone to see. Most of the world heard his name for the first time from the NYT itself or from a broadcast beginning with "According to the NYT ..."
And I think the reason why the NYT was willing to do that is because they were even more horrified than most of us that this could happen in their house ("We're the TIMES!"). Which I'm just suggesting, their arrogance aside, is a fair indication that Jayson Blair's activities are not mainstream NYT practices.
I respect the NYT, though as I said, I have strong reservations about their culture (and really the New York culture in general).
As for the WSJ, you should know that it has long been the general consensus among media critics and historians that their editoorial page and even some of their news holes tend to be right of center.
It's a natural institutional bias. They sell access to Wal-Street players to their subscribers, so they are bound to feel pressure about ensuring that access is protected. Many of their journalists and writers come from the Wall Street culture, so their natural biases tend to reflect the fiscal conservatism that comes from understanding how to increase profits through reputation and confidence.
That said, both the NYT and the WSJ have good moments and bad moments. Both have institutional biases that influence the way they approach the world.
That's why I tend to recommend to my students a balanced media diet. If you watch an hour of Fox, watch an hour of CNN (and if you have satellite, watch CNNi, which actually is the closest thinng to an English-speaking left-leaning network there is).
My students are encouraged to read the NYT (the NYT agenda-setting function is undeniable), but also their local paper (whose editorial page is rather conservative) and either the WSJ or the Economist.
I think the only solution to understanding people of different viewpoints is to consume media from differing markets. All media tailor their coverage to their readership (journalism is a business, after all), so reading several sources rather than sticking to the one that agrees with you is the only way to be able to understand others enough to talk to them without falling prey to insulated ideology.
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