Su: Though the proportion of genuine frivolous lawsuits is indeed blown out of all proportion like anything else that newsmen get their hands on (can't blame 'em, really, they're usually pretty funny stories), litigiousness in this country is quite plainly on the rise and it's practically a knee-jerk reaction to sue for any percieved wrongdoing with much of the populace now. One can see this pretty much every day- and actually, I and my family have been threatened with lawsuits more than once, and we're not exactly prime targets.
What stupid lawsuits have to do with the medical profession in particular isn't at all clear. There's no real rising trend of malpractice suits, and the ratio of bad suits to ones where there was some genuine crime involved are, I'd expect, about the same as in any other category. In short, Lib's just talking out of his ass, and whether he got those ass-words from someone else and simply passes them on unaware of their anal origins due to an unwillingness to do research or whether they came from his own ass doesn't really matter.
Lib: Tell that last bit to the guy who's heart surgery gets buggered up by some overpaid twat with a few degrees. He's dead now, or at best crippled for life, with minimal recourse- how does that even compare to the potential loss of some money and prestige? The fact is, doctors are paid huge amounts of money for their services, and we entrust them with our lives. Generally, when there's a genuine case of malpractice, it's not just some innocent "oops", someone's been made sick or killed by another person's failure to do their job. When there's an unjustified suit... well, fine, yeah, it's harmful to the defendant but nobody's really suggested a way to cut back on those without letting more cases of genuine malpractice go unpunished. And, moan how you like about the poor oppressed doctors in their hundred-thousand-dollar villas driving a new car every year (which, actually, is a microcosm of how the fairly small-fry doctor in my family lives, if anything I'm understating), letting people get away with murder is one hell of a lot worse than a coupla loonies trying to sue because they don't like the taste of aspirin. It's well and good to believe in things like "The government should protect the good doctors and nurses from frivolous indictments and should stop the bad ones from practicing."- hell, it's nice to believe everyone can and should live in a magical fairy castle in the sky made out of marshmallows and radium and never have to work again but all be bajillionaires anyway- doesn't mean it's gonna happen, and saying **** like that doesn't do anything towards making it happen. Nobody on any party has done anything creative in that respect, Reagan or anybody else. Mostly, mucking around in that field, like so many, has just ****ed things up worse. And, it being the US government, there's practically no way to un**** what's been ****ed, so **** just piles up higher and higher and higher.