Dr. Richard Rafal's satirical piece in the Wall Street Journal on 9/3/09 is worth passing along. It's humorous and ironic given the fact that health care reform initiatives out of Congress haven't even hinted at touching the massive benefit we would receive from proper Tort reform.

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By RICHARD B. RAFAL

Since we are moving toward socialism with ObamaCare, the time has come to do the same with other professions--especially lawyers. Physician committees can decide whether lawyers are necessary in any given situation.

At a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., last month, our uninformed lawyer in chief suggested that we physicians would rather chop off a foot than manage diabetes since we would make more money doing surgery. Then President Obama compounded his attack by claiming a doctor's reimbursement is between "$30,000" and "$50,000" for such amputations! (Actually, such surgery costs only about $1,500.)

Physicians have never been so insulted. Because of these affronts, I will gladly volunteer for the important duty of controlling and regulating lawyers. Since most of what lawyers do is repetitive boilerplate or pushing paper, physicians would have no problem dictating what is appropriate for attorneys. We physicians know much more about legal practice than lawyers do about medicine.

Following are highlights of a proposed bill authorizing the dismantling of the current framework of law practice and instituting socialized legal care:

• Contingency fees will be discouraged, and eventually outlawed, over a five-year period. This will put legal rewards back into the pockets of the deserving--the public and the aggrieved parties. Slick lawyers taking their "cut" smacks of a bookie operation. Attorneys will be permitted to keep up to 3% in contingency cases, the remainder going into a pool for poor people.