Funny to see the Post use the term “speed up” in its headline, when the strategy is clearly to kick the tort reform can down the road and into the ditch to be covered by the first snows of winter.

• Washington Post, “Obama to Speed Up Tort Reform Tests, but Doctors Want More“
• Chicago Tribune, “Medical malpractice reform: Barack Obama plan to reduce lawsuits earns few backers“
• Kansas City Star, “Sebelius, Obama tiptoe into tort reform“
• Point of Law, “White House announces med-mal demonstration grants“

President Obama today sent a memorandum to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebalius instructing HHS to develop demonstration projects on patient safety and medical liability.

• Presidential Memorandum
• FACT SHEET: Patient Safety and Medical Liability Reform Demonstration
• Secretary Sebelius comments at White House press briefing.

Philip K. Howard, legal reformer and author, in The Atlantic, “The Menu of Malpractice Reforms”

American Tort Reform Association news release, “White House Memo, Trial Lawyer Position on the Need for Tort Reform Share Similarities”

UPDATE (5:25 p.m.): The American Association for Justice continues its suddenly frenetic fundraising, asking its trial lawyer members via e-mail to help pay a new ad campaign.

The Washington Examiner, “Majority to Obama: Get serious on tort reform“:

Although most of his health care speech consisted of the same talking points he has been offering for months, President Obama last week offered up one surprise as he sought to make his increasingly unpopular health reform bill more palatable for the American public. “I don’t believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I have talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs,” Obama said. He added that he was authorizing Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to begin “demonstration projects” in various states to deal with malpractice reform.

HHS Secretary Sebelius, the Examiner notes, spent eight years as executive director of the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association.

In an interview, The Washington Post asked Secretary Sebelius about her role in promoting demonstration projects and other legal reforms. The Weekly Standard reports her response:

I think I’m just the person to do it because I think I understand the system of litigation very well. I understand that we want to, as the President has always said, compensate injured victims, but the defensive medicine is not helpful to the overall cost in the system. The best opportunity is to raise the quality of care and lower medical errors, so there are lots of strategies we can put in place.

Standard contributor Mary Katherine Ham comments: “Indeed, as I’ve consistently said, the fox is uniquely qualified to guard the henhouse, because he understands the delicious taste of poultry very well.”

The health care reform legislation released by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus yesterday also mentions tort reform. In passing. As an idea worth considering. Eventually.

The Chairman’s Mark would express the Sense of the Senate that health care reform presents an opportunity to address issues related to medical malpractice and medical liability insurance. The Mark would further express the Sense of the Senate that states should be encouraged to develop and test alternatives to the current civil litigation system as a way of improving patient safety, reducing medical errors, encouraging the efficient resolution of disputes, increasing the availability of prompt and fair resolution of disputes, and improving access to liability insurance, while preserving an individual’s right to seek redress in court. The Mark would express the Sense of the Senate that Congress should consider establishing a state demonstration program to evaluate alternatives to the current civil litigation system.

The Washington Post today publishes an op-ed by Philip K. Howard, chairman of the Common Good legal reform group and a partner with the law firm Covington & Burling, “Health Reform’s Taboo Topic.”

Not taboo at Shopfloor.org, where we’ve been writing (crankily) about the influence of the powerful special interest, the trial lawyers, and their influential lobbyists, preventing consideration of liability limits as an element in any health-care reform. Howard explains the cost of that omission:

[Congressional] leadership has slammed the door on solutions to the one driver of waste that is relatively easy to fix: the erratic, expensive and time-consuming jury-by-jury malpractice system. Pilot projects could test whether this system should be replaced with expert health courts, but leaders who say they want to cut costs will not even consider them.

What are they scared of? The answer is inescapable — such expert courts might succeed and undercut the special interest of an influential lobby, the trial lawyers. An expeditious and reliable new system would compensate patients more quickly and at a fraction of the overhead of the current medical justice system, which spends nearly 60 cents of every dollar on lawyers’ fees and administrative costs.

Even more compelling, expert health courts would eliminate the need for “defensive medicine,” thereby helping to save enough money for America to afford universal health coverage.

And here’s yet another Washington Post story on the influence of lobbying on the health care debate, “Industry Is Generous To Influential Bloc.”

And yet again, no mention of the American Association for Justice or campaign contributions from the plaintiffs’ bar.

From Mother Jones, a reasonable assessment of President Obama’s speech Monday to the American Medical Association and his seriousness in agreeing (vaguely) with legal reform to help curb health care costs, “Doctors Boo Obama“:

Hillary Clinton tried this same anti-lawsuit gambit back in the early 1990s and we all know how well that worked out.  Obama’s situation is probably even more hopeless because he’s making promises that the AMA must know he can’t keep. Here’s why: As a constitutional law professor, Obama knows well that most of the legal measures doctors support to reduce “defensive medicine,” including the much vaunted “health court” proposals, are fundamentally unconstitutional. They tend to violate people’s Seventh Amendment rights to a jury trial, among other things. Moreover, with Democrats running the House and Senate, restrictions on medical malpractice lawsuits are most likely dead on arrival.

It’s not just trial lawyer money that will doom the effort. Trial lawyers don’t have nearly as much money as doctors and insurance companies, for one thing. But also, there are some powerful lawyers in Congress who will put up a big fight on this one on principle. Among them: Republican senator and onetime trial lawyer Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, who voted against malpractice reform bills in 2003 and 2004. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), another former trial lawyer, has also been a reliable opponent of lawsuit restrictions. Obama’s own vice president might pose the biggest obstacle to any attempt to limit malpractice suits. Joe Biden was a trial lawyer himself (as is his brother and son, Beau), and the biggest donors during his political career have been fellow plaintiff attorneys. Biden has never once supported a tort reform bill in Congress; it seems unlikely he would start supporting such proposals now.

Don’t underestimate trial lawyer influence; they’re a core constituency.