Maine Doctors turn down tort reform!! Republican author says, “It was like a slap in the face.”

Think about it; in a free market, would the government regulate malpractice payouts? Would it regulate who can sue and who can’t? Would the government step in and protect business from consumer accountability?

Of course not, but that’s just what the Republican Party has packaged and sold as “deregulate free enterprise.” But are times changing?

NY Times: With Republicans in complete control of Maine’s state government for the first time since 1962, State Senator Lois A. Snowe-Mello offered a bill in February to limit doctors’ liability that she was sure the powerful doctors’ lobby would cheer. Instead, it asked her to shelve the measure.

“It was like a slap in the face,” said Ms. Snowe-Mello, who describes herself as a conservative Republican. “The doctors in this state are increasingly going left.”

But doctors are changing. They are abandoning their own practices and taking salaried jobs in hospitals, as more doctors move from business owner to shift worker, their historic alliance with the Republican Party is weakening … Indeed, after opposing almost every major health overhaul proposal for nearly a century, the American Medical Association supported President Obama’s legislation last year because the new law would provide health insurance to the vast majority of the nation’s uninsured, improve competition and choice in insurance, and promote prevention and wellness, the group said. The Maine doctors’ group once opposed health insurance mandates because they increase costs to employers, but it now supports them, despite Republican opposition, because they help patients.

Helping patients? Those damn health insurance mandates are ending up saving lives. It's like a slap in the face.