Stop the rising cost of health care by holding big tobacco responsible - not capping damages for victims of medical malpractice

More than 500,000 Americans die each year from smoking related illnesses. Instead of trying to solve the problem of the high cost of medical care by capping the damages of the most severely injured victims of medical malpractice this country needs to hold the tobacco companies accountable for years of misconduct and deceit. Companies that market an addictive product to children that they know causes cancer should not be allowed to defend by saying the consumer should have known better. The tobacco companies should have known better. The fact that they are clever marketers and successfully fooled people should not be a defense. To reduce the high cost of health care we need to reduce the demands on the health system. High demand leads to higher costs. We can reduce demand by reducing the number of cancer patients created every year by the tobacco companies. The only way to do that is to eliminate the assumption of the risk defense and let the plaintiffs lawyers sue the tobacco companies into oblivion. See Robert Peck's letter to the editor below:

Your Nov. 2 editorial 'Excessive punitive damages,' about Philip Morris v. Williams, pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, argues that punitive damages 'must bear some common-sense relationship to actual harm proved.' When I appeared before that court as counsel last week, I argued in favor of the same principle. Internal corporate documents introduced in evidence exposed a deliberate, expensive and carefully orchestrated campaign to convince smokers that smoking was not unhealthy and the nicotine in cigarettes were not addictive, even though the company knew these were lies. The company congratulated itself on the campaign's multibillion-dollar success, calling it 'brilliantly conceived and executed.' It was for that still-unreconstructed behavior that punitive damages were properly awarded. How else can such profitable misconduct be deterred and such a company held accountable?"

Robert S. Peck, Pres. of CCL, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11/6/06
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Nov-06-Mon-2006/opinion/10600246.html