…you might want to read what Dwight Meredith wrote about Bush II’s proposal to cap lifetime pain-and-suffering awards at $250,000.
It is beyond dispute that pain and suffering is a real, actual, legitimate loss. The hard question is how much money is required to compensate for a given amount of pain and suffering. There is no scale that actually balances pain on one side of the scale and money on the other side. The Bush administration suggests that a lifetime of pain and suffering result in compensation of a maximum of $250,000.
Perhaps we can put that amount into perspective by comparing it with other values our within society.
In 1999 Ken Lay dispatched an empty Enron Jet to France to fetch his daughter Robin home from Nice. The cost of that flight was was $125,000 or one half of what the Bush administration considers to be the value of a lifetime of pain and suffering.
The Bush administration’s latest tax cut proposal would have reduced Dick Cheney’s taxes by $220,000 in the last year he worked at Halliburton. That tax relief is approximately 90% of what the Bush administration believes to be the damages for a lifetime of pain and suffering.
Former Tyco executive Dennis Kozlowski spent $2.1 million on a birthday party for his wife (more than Mr. Bush feels is fair for 8 people having to live while hooked up to tubes unable to feed themselves).
A lifetime with brain damage caused by medical negligence, according to the administration, should result in compensation for pain and suffering that is less than the cost of a 2002 Rolls-Royce.