Friday, August 21, 2009

Rise and shine, tort reform!

I was jerked out of hibernation mode early this morning by Madame. "It's time to get to work, LOTUS", Madame said. "I want to get a post up early so that I can spend time with Willow and Piper before they go to school".

"But I haven't even had my javascript yet", I complained. I am not a morning laptop. I'm quite blurry-screened in the morning, but I looked down at my icon tray to see that it was before 6 AM.

"Just be glad I'm not taking you out moose hunting", she said.

I asked her what we'd be writing about. She told me that she wanted to tackle another issue of Obamacare. We had already looked at rationing of care and the sanctity of all life, end-of-life counseling, and one of the Great Opologizer's health policy advisers and the spending involved in health care reform. I wondered what topic would be next. She told me we were going to look at tort reform. "But what if President Obama thinks that all we're talking about is modifying a dessert recipe?", I asked.

"Oh, silly LOTUS, President Obama is a lawyer; he knows what tort reform is", Madame assured me.

So we went to writing her post. Over the past year, Madame has had a lot of silly ethics complaints and lawsuits thrown at her, but she has taken care of them all. She has some great people working with her: Thomas Van Fine (that's what I call him. He's quite the looker, for a human) and Meg "the Enforcer" Stapleton. So she knows that, sometimes, the lawsuit process needs to be reformed, because money is wasted on frivolous cases--whether it's in medicine or government ethics. So we talked a little bit about that in her post. Thankfully, she decided not to footnote these. That would have taken us forever to do! We talked about the excessive money spent on trial lawyers rather than doctors. She emphasized that, if controlling costs was key part of the reform, then tort reform needed to be in place. It was a rather good post. We even got to use some italics, bold font, and some heel(foot)notes. In your facebook, Katie Couric!

After the post, I looked back in "My Documents" to find Madame's State of the State Address that she wrote earlier this year. My friend the TOAK (Teleprompter of Alaska) participated in her presentation as you can see below. She talked about health care reform from about the 4:12 to 6:12 mark in the video. She discussed several aspects of health care reform: greater competition, more health care choices, and less litigation. She even talked about personal responsibility. Softy Southpaws like the government to be in charge of everything, but Madame thinks some of the greatest traits of Americans are self-sufficiency and self-determination. Part of health care is personally making smart choices. See for yourself what she has to say:

4 comments:

Rodel said...

LOTUS thank you for helping Sarah in writing that very timely and wise advice to the boy President.

You should be honored in working with her.

Thanks.

Meadow said...

By all that is Holy, 6am is more than a bit early, LOTUS! You did a good job, with or without your javascript.

Isn't is wonderful working with someone who knows her subject and doesn't hesitate to call a spad... oops that could be misconstrued *blush*

Just in case the current resident of the WH needed to polish up on tort vs torte, Madame45 gave succinct words for his edification.

(OK, now I'm out of big words, and getting tired.)

Have a great weekend, LOTUS!

Anonymous said...

Again, you are amazing LOTUS! Working with an esteemed woman is such an honor. Keep it up!
-Jane

wisetrog said...

Amazing job, LOTUS!

It's not just Thomas van Fine (ha ha) who is good-looking? Every one of Sarah's retinue is good-looking. Have you seen Meg Stapleton or Kirsten Cole?