He Knows Something

Wampum posts this heartfelt plea for a call to your Senators to protest this outrage on the part of our own favorite Dr. Catkiller.

She believes that his relentlessness in getting this provision passed has to do with a larger ambition toward “tort reform” and capping medical malpractice awards. But, I actually think it may be more sinister than that.

That explanation makes a lot of sense as it pertains to Frist the majority leader, but it doesn’t really explain his prior undeviating focus on what is surely a rather obscure issue in the entire medical malpractice scheme. Long before he was responsible for bankrupting the trial lawyers to cripple the Democratic party, he was trying to get this bill passed. He has been rebuffed again and again, but he keeps coming back. As we all know, he even stuck it into the Homeland Security bill and forced poor, drunk Dick Armey to take the fall.

No. There must be more to this. The best spin is that he is owned by Eli Lily and this issue is of extreme importance to them. He’s a typical senate whore doing what he’s paid to do. Simple. They do not want any liability on anything. And, one can easily see how it might be that Frist and his cronies want to raid the vaccine trust fund as Wampum speculates. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.

But, none of this explains why he specifically snuck the thimerosol issue into the Homeland Security bill in the dead of night.

In an earlier post Wampum links to a story about the new tobacco case that John Ashcroft apparently let slip through the cracks:

Five big cigarette companies and a public relations firm sat down to devise a fraudulent scheme “to preserve and enhance the tobacco industry’s profits by maximizing the number of smokers . . . and to avoid adverse liability judgments” linked to smoking-related diseases, the government charges.

That’s what these greedy bastards do. I think it’s about the thimerosol. And Frist knows it.

correction: Dick Armey, not Bill.