Fast food calorie counts, but no tort reform

By now, you’ve probably already heard of the 1,990 page health-care reform bill being pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her progressive minions. Once Americans have a chance to read through it, I’m sure we’ll find some interesting stuff. I just found an interesting factoid today: Section 2572 will require vending machines and restaurant chains to include calories counts on their menus. Isn’t this a little much?

I’m sure Pelosi and company could easily rationalize this by explaining that informed consumers would buy less unhealthy food if they could actually see how bad it is for their health. This would result in the typical person consuming fewer calories, which could result in less obesity, which could result in fewer medical conditions, which could result in fewer dollars spent on health-care. Got all that?

Now, you might not care about Big Brother evaluating your food. Personally, I think it’s over-kill, but I don’t really care about the substance of this section. What does bother me is that it was almost certainly thrown in their for potential cost savings, yet other opportunities to save substantial amounts of money were ignored. One glaring example is the omission of tort reform. Just take a look at the present Nancy Pelosi and company gave to trial lawyers:

Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.

Tort reform has the potential to save $54 billion over a ten year period. The bill is estimated to cost a little over $900 billion. If someone was really serious about having comprehensive health-care reform passed while reducing expenses, shouldn’t they examine every opportunity to reduce costs? Of course, these potential savings might have been ignored because of the generosity trial lawyers have shown toward Democrats. That’s unfortunate, but don’t worry. You will soon be able to find out how many calories are in your favorite hamburger. I’m sure that will result in huge savings for our nation.