8th District Watch – Walsh Says Bean Voting with Trial Lawyers, Not Constituents

Joe Walsh

The following press release has been received from Republican congressional candidate Joe Walsh:

Bean Set to Vote Interests of Trial Lawyers Over Interest of Constituents

(LAKE ZURICH, IL)– With the Obamacare legislation nearing a vote, Rep. Melissa Bean (D-8) remains intent on representing the special interests that control her political party as opposed to voting the interests of 8th district families.

Bean, who received more than $31,000 in campaign contributions from trial lawyers during her 2008 re-election campaign, is set to vote for a federal government takeover of health care that, among other things, fails to meaningfully address increasing health care costs directly attributable to frivolous lawsuits and excessive jury awards.

“True health care reform requires tort reform,” said Joe Walsh, Bean’s Republican challenger.

“Unfortunately, Melissa Bean is in the pocket of trial lawyers.  She has put the interests of her large campaign donors ahead of supporting simple reforms such as caps on non-economic damages that would make health care coverage more affordable for 8th district families.”

Walsh cited a U.S. Department of Health & Human Services report that concluded excessive damage awards from medical malpractice lawsuits add between $70 and $126 billion to the cost of health care borne by Americans each year.

Experts say national tort reform is estimated to save $92 to $207 billion dollars per year on health care costs.  Yet, the trillion dollar Obamacare legislation provides only $25 million to ‘projects’ and ‘studies’ looking at tort reform.

“The time for ‘studies’ is over,” said Walsh.  “We need action on tort reform.  This problem of lawsuit abuse is particularly acute in Illinois where medical malpractice insurance premiums in Cook County, for example, are more than twice as expensive as rates in Indiana,” said Walsh.

“The failure of the Obamacare legislation to address tort reform and Melissa Bean’s failure to embrace common sense reforms that address the problem of lawsuit abuse highlight once again why we cannot afford Obamacare and we cannot afford to have Melissa Bean in Congress.”


Comments

8th District Watch – Walsh Says Bean Voting with Trial Lawyers, Not Constituents — 5 Comments

  1. Bean is a big trial lawyer fan? Really?! That would be news to the trial lawyers I suppose. And news to me.

    She is a lot of things that conservatives aren’t crazy about but ‘big trial lawyer buddy’ isn’t one of them. This must have been a fill-in-the-blank NRCC press release.

  2. No “Drew”? Check your FEC filings and we’ll allow you to retract your ignorant statement…

  3. I think Walsh is just mad at trial attorneys. After all it was the evil attorneys who filed suit against him when he failed to pay his campaign manager. And then again it was attorneys who filed suit against him when he failed to pay his mortgage on his condo. If is wasn’t for those darn trial attorneys Walsh could continue to welch on his financial obligations.

  4. I just checked opensecrets.org. The vast majority of her money comes from business. Actually I am surprised at how little comes from trial lawyers and big labor for a democrat. It’s mostly business and finance etc.

    And with all due respect Mr. Liberty, if you don’t agree with me, just say so – you don’t have to call me ignorant.

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