Lawyers' new governmental plum.

9--30--1998

Since it makes sense to vaccinate children in order to protect them from life-threatening diseases as well as to protect the populace at large from epidemics, the federal government has backed an extensive, albeit voluntary (as of course it should be!), childhood vaccination program. This is not new in the sense that moms and dads have been encouraged to vaccinate their kids for the better part of the century. What's new is the method devised for the tort bar to more painlessly collect from the activity.

As with many things in an imperfect world, vaccinations don't always work as planned. Sometimes individuals suffer allergic reactions or other difficulties as a result of the vaccinations. This is statistically rare but it happens.

As always with parasitical creatures, survival must be by sucking the life blood, i.e. money, from others who are actually productive. Of course lawyers have long been suing pharmaceutical firms when someone suffered an allergic reaction from vaccination. One of the worst things about this was that the drug companies tended to simply cease production of something - something very beneficial - that resulted in their being sued for endless millions of dollars.

So some ten years ago, it was decided that claims could be made against the government itself instead of the drug manufacturers. The Department of Health and Human Services accepts claims from those injured or supposedly harmed by the vaccination programs, and over the past ten years it has paid some 1 billion dollars of taxpayers' money to claimants - and, of course, to their attorneys.

Since there is important protection for us all in successful vaccination programs, perhaps the overall result is better than the alternative of drug manufacturers not producing vaccines, period. But the flaw of all this is rooted in basic faulty logic sponsored by lawyers which results in the rip-off of the rest of us: If there is some injury, then someone must pay (and pay obscenely).

Moving lawsuit funding from private enterprise to government obscures the tort bar ripoff. It also makes it easier to accept, and that is always dangerous. And why is it that if someone acknowledges beforehand the potential risks as well as the benefits of a course of action, then voluntarily accepts same, that others should be required to pay for any actual risks which might subsequently be realized? Let people obtain private insurance, at pre-agreed rates and benefits, and keep the lawyers (and the government), out of it.